ALPHABET CITY

STOLEN/REWARD: Dell Vostro 3500 (red)

2012-05-22T16:59:00.002-04:00

Hey, person who stole my laptop out of my car in either the Nathan's or Micro Center parking lot in Westbury, New York on May 21, 2012 between 12:00PM and 1:30PM: wtf, man? What, didn't you think I needed it anymore? Why don't you get your own damn laptop?

This is my Dell Vostro 3500. It is service tag (serial number) 245N7L1, and this is not only on the bottom of the machine but embedded in the system itself. You can't get rid of it, Mr. Thief. If you have a laptop with this serial number, whether procured directly from me (ie. you are the thief) or purchased (from the thief), you have my laptop. And I want it back.

Whether you are the thief or just some innocent bystander who bought it at a pawn shop, I am prepared to offer a reward of $500 for its return. No questions asked. I just want it back, and I will pay $500 for my stupidity of leaving it in my car while I went to buy batteries for 5 minutes. This laptop is 2 years old and cost me $700 when I got it back then; it's not going to get you more than a couple hundred bucks in resale now - I'm offering you a better deal. $500 for doing nothing other than returning the laptop you stole, and I clear the police report. And if you're an innocent who bought it third-hand, well, you *could* be left holding the bag, since it is stolen property and you're currently in possession of it - but that $500 should take the sting out of otherwise having to return it to me. I don't want you to have to suffer like I am; assuming whoever you bought it from charged a reasonable price, you'll probably even make a profit on the whole thing when all is said and done.

If you don't take me up on my offer, I'll just say that I am watching every site on the internet to see if anything related to this laptop turns up anywhere - Ebay, Craigslist, 4chan, you name it, and the police have told me they'll act on that. You're not going to be able to resell it unless you sell it to a friend. Do everybody involved a favor - take my reward.

Email me with pics of the laptop, including the service tag, and we can figure out how I'll get the laptop back and you'll get the reward.

If you really want to keep it despite the reward, please do me a favor and wipe the drive. It'll make it easier to resell without all those pesky passwords to deal with anyway.

I don't have much hope of this reaching whoever has my laptop, but everything is worth trying. And I'm trying everything.

Upgrading a cheap Strat - step one!

2012-04-27T22:40:00.002-04:00

I love cheap but effective guitar upgrades, and this is definitely in that category.

A few years back, I bought a cheap $169 Squier Stratocaster for my wife and I to share as a "practice guitar" - she doesn't have another guitar with a tremolo and I just wanted a guitar I could beat up and not worry about.

We've never really been all that happy with it, though. Like a lot of cheap guitars, it looks and feels good when you first pick it up but it's just missing something, and I don't know what... that thing that makes you love a guitar, I guess, whatever that is. Mojo. It kind of looks and feels like a toy, for reasons I've never really been able to put my finger on - objectively, it's actually built a lot better than you'd expect a $170 guitar to be. (I did replace the weird, nasty green pickup covers and knobs the week I got it.) We rarely use it because it just doesn't feel right, to either of us.

I had figured part of it was its thin sound, both amped and unamped. Actually, amped it sounds ok if not very distinguished, but unamped it sounds like total cheez wiz. And I'm definitely a firm believer that a shitty sounding unamped electric guitar can only ever sound as good as its pickups when amped... and the pickups in this thing aren't great either. A guitar lacking resonance is just never going to have great sustain or depth, and will always sound thinner and hollower than it should when amped.

So I read up a bit and decided to do some upgrades - this was the first and most obvious:

Some of you are now nodding knowingly while the rest are saying "lol wut?"

That's the cheap zinc tremolo block built into Asian and Mexican Strats. If you're new to Strats and trying to figure out why yours sounds like shit too, this is part of the reason.

On most guitars, the bridge and/or tremolo assembly is the main thing that transfers the vibration of the strings to the body of the guitar, and that directly affects sustain. On the Strat, the bridge and tremolo are directly connected - they're screwed together to make a single assembly. The strings pass over the bridge saddles and down into the tremolo block. It's true that most of the string vibration is absorbed by the bridge saddles, but since the bridge and trem are all one piece, everything vibrates together.

I figured replacing that lightweight zinc block might not help a huge amount, but it certainly couldn't hurt.

To do this, you have to first remove your strings, then remove your bridge from the guitar by removing the springs from the back, then remove the saddles. Then you can unscrew the trem block from the bridge.

This is what that cheap block looks like when removed from the guitar:

This is the replacement trem block:

It's a GFS brass block. They make these in both steel and brass - reading between the lines, the description made it sound like if you need a little help, get steel, but if you think your guitar just sounds like shit, get brass. They also make them for US, Mexican and "Import" Strats - I bought the import version, since my Strat is made in China.

Here they are both together so you can directly compare:

The brass block really has a lot more mass. It will add probably about 8-10 ounces to the weight of your guitar. It's not only thicker, it's wider too. And made of heavy brass instead of zinc.

Installing the new block should be a straightforward process of reversing the removal of the old one, but in my case there were a couple complications that you might also run into.

The body route was not wide enough for the new trem block - I just used a Dremel (the poor-man's router) to enlarge it. No, you can't see the imprecise edges - it's all hidden under the bridge.
The tremolo arm hole didn't line up with the bridge - in fact, I had the hole pattern of a Mexican Strat in my Chinese guitar! That's the thing about Asian Strats - you really never know what you're gonna get. The hole was close enough that I could kind of force the arm in there and it seems ok.
At GFS's insistence, I bought a US-sized trem arm, only to discover that my old trem block already had one! What?! This is a Chinese guitar. It seems like I actually just had a Mexican trem block.

Once the new trem block is in there, you just replace the springs and saddles, re-string it and you're in business. You will probably need to re-intonate too, unless you know the exact distance your saddles were screwed in before.

So how's the sound? Well, I can say it's most definitely better. It's still a little overly bright for my taste (next I'll try different strings), but when playing unamped, the guitar is louder and has much better sustain. There's definitely more resonance - I can feel the guitar vibrating against me now when I play. Previously, the only guitar I had that would do this was my Jazzmaster. The Strat is now just as loud and resonant when unamped as my Jazzmaster (though I still prefer the darker sound of the JM).

Does that translate to a better sound when amped? I think so. Obviously the pickups and electronics are most of the actual amped tone, but I can definitely hear the sustain and that translates to a perception of depth, because chords and notes aren't just falling off as soon as I hit them. The guitar just sounds alive, whereas before it sounded dead. So yes, it sounds better.

This is a $30 upgrade, so while you may not hear a dramatic difference while amped, it's something cheap that's worth doing if you've got a Squier or even Mexican Fender Strat with one of those pot metal blocks.

It looks cool too!

New amp day! And a little Ebay story.

2012-04-27T16:00:00.002-04:00

A warning: this is the first of two more guitar-related posts coming up. (Yes, the Japan top 10 is still in the pipeline!)

I got my new amp!

Well, it's new to me anyway. It's a 2008 Fender Twin Reverb (as I previously hinted at buying), purchased on Ebay. The transaction ended up being a little painful as the seller obviously didn't know how to ship it and tried to add "packaging" costs onto the shipping charge after the auction had ended - essentially asking me to pay more than I had won the auction for. Not only against Ebay's TOS, but definitely shady if you ask me. This is definitely a heavy amp, but I ship stuff all the time, and I was able to look up the actual price to ship it through my UPS account, which was about $150 less than what he was asking me for. When I opened the box, I discovered why - he had asked the UPS Store to pack it for him rather than packing it himself, and they had used heavy blankets as packing material.

Basically, I was being asked to pay $150 for blankets, and the extra cost of shipping them - they weigh about 10 pounds by themselves! But I wasn't bidding on blankets; I was bidding on an amp, and he hadn't included the cost of blankets in his quoted shipping price. (Nor would I have bid on his auction if he had.)

We argued just a tiny bit but I ended up paying him what I had calculated the actual shipping cost as. It drives me a little crazy, though, that he never quite understood the issue - he thought I was taking $150 out of his pocket, and he's going to continue thinking that, that there's someone out there who stole $150 from him on his amp auction. That's going to kind of piss me off every time I look at this thing. He never understood that he was asking me to pay for his choice of using somebody else to pack the box for him, and long after he had entered the shipping price onto his auction page.

The amp itself is going to be great, but the seller also did not remove the tubes from it (as I asked) and now the reverb tube seems to be making noise, so I'll probably have to replace that. Blah! I made this (boring) video to ask about the reverb noise on a forum I read and that's the answer I got - feel free to tell me different if you know different:

I didn't record myself playing through it because I am frankly kind of embarrassed to do that when there are all these videos out there of random people playing like they're the second coming of Jimi Hendrix. People are going to laugh at me and my lack of skillz.

But the tone is amazing, and exactly what I wanted. I definitely can't overdrive it, I know that - in my house, I will mostly be playing with the volume set on 1. It's a loud amp. But it sounds great on 1, even though I'm not even stretching the legs on those 6L6 power tubes. I can use my Fender Blender clone for distortion (dialed back, it makes a great distortion instead of fuzz.) On a weekend day, maybe I'll get adventurous, shake the house, annoy the neighbors and crank it up to 2. I do still hope to play out someday, though, and then I can probably take it up to 3 or 4. Who wants to start a band??

(btw, there's a "this one goes to 11" joke in here somewhere, but I can't find it. I think on 11, though, this amp would probably wipe out half of the eastern seaboard.)

One thing I knew before buying it (and obviously, it was the reason for the shipping difficulty): this thing is heavy. I knew that fact but had to experience it before I really understood it. It's a backbreaker! You look at it and think "it's mostly hollow, and not really that big, how heavy could it be?" Then you try to pick it up and it's like "crack!" and just like that, your back is broken. So I'm writing this from my hospital bed...

Not really. But it's so heavy that I end up dragging it across the floor when I try to move it. First thing I did was put some heavy duty felt pads on the metal feet to move it easier without scratching the floor - I recommend this! It's like a piece of furniture. It is actually heavier than my couch. Maybe someday I'll get this ATA flight case so I can wheel it around with the top off.

Anyway, so yeah. Great amp, not a great buying experience. On the plus side, I did get it for $790, plus about $95 shipping. Compared to a new one, I saved about $400. Which seems about right.

BEST SCANDAL

2012-04-19T01:25:00.001-04:00

Woohoo! Finally got this, after three years of searching:

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I found this used in Japan, but it was too expensive at 3980 yen. Apparently I need to update my knowledge - this is Amazon Japan:

Gah! Apparently 3,980 was a pretty good deal. 19,800 yen is approximately $250. They have blown up since the Budokan show. Even their latest CD, which is still in print, is selling for above its MSRP (and more than I paid for it).

This is BEST SCANDAL with the DVD, which is the only format I buy CD's in anymore. The regular CD version (no DVD) is expensive too, but not ridiculous like that.

I ended up paying $20 for mine.

Mine's the Hong Kong version, so ok, not technically comparable. But it's the same content and packaging, so I don't care.

Incidentally, part of the reason I'm writing this is to tell you I have a new camera (which I took the top picture with - sorry about the slight blurriness, still learning how to use it!), and I'll be writing about that very soon.

Guitar amp shopping - I'm a bit overwhelmed at the moment

2012-04-16T19:49:00.000-04:00

I'm going to take a break from my Japan stuff (still writing that top ten list!) to talk some more about my other big life obsession: guitars! And stuff that goes with them.

Photo by devkoDE

I'm shopping for a new amp. It's really hard! Maybe some of you are, or have been, in the same boat. Right now I only have a tiny little Marshall practice amp, and it's basically junk even for a practice amp. When I was younger and played bass in a band, I thought I knew a little more about amps than I do now - I had a Peavey and then an Ampeg bass amp, both solid state, but I always wanted a tube amp. One of my band's guitarists had a Marshall tube combo amp (I don't remember which one), and even though I didn't like that specific amp much, I did like the tube warmth and I've always liked the Marshall crunch. Marshall also makes a lot of amps with an overdrive channel so you can play distorted without blowing the house down from volume. In an ideal world, I would probably buy a Marshall combo amp that can do everything.

There seem to be two basic schools of thought with guitar amps - all else grows out of these two general approaches:

The amp should be a jack of all trades, including all tones and effects you could ever want. You should never need to add another pedal to your setup; pedals just muddy the sound of the amp and add noise.
The amp should do nothing but amplify, and provide a natural reference tone as the basis for whatever else you want to do. Any effects or tonal changes you want can and should be achieved with pedals.

Obviously two opposing viewpoints there, but it's why we have stuff like Line 6 solid state "modeling" amps and even Marshall type tube stuff with separate OD channel and effects loops on the one hand, and then things like Fender's vintage reissue line that basically have nothing extra but analog reverb on the other. Sure, some amps kind of straddle the line or end up in between the two extremes, but I think they still originally grew out of one of those two approaches.

I go back and forth on which camp I'm in and it's one reason why I'm having trouble picking out an amp. But if you're in the same boat as me, I think it would probably help to firmly plant yourself in one of those two schools and start looking from there. Do you want an amp that does everything, or do you want an amp that provides the cleanest, most natural tone that you can then add onto yourself?

You would think that by now, there would be an amp that can do everything and provide a really clean, natural reference tone. Well, maybe there is, but I haven't found it and I don't know many other guitarists who have either - otherwise the aforementioned Fender reissue line or even something like the Marshall Bluesbreaker would not continue to exist. Every amp that can do great distortion seems to sound like shit when played clean. Every amp that does modeling through transistors seems to sound really mechanical and thin. Most amps that sound great clean just won't ever break up into distortion, or only do so when REALLY loud. And it goes on like that. Amps that try to be jacks of all trades end up masters of none, it seems.

And you can always add distortion to a great-sounding clean amp. But it's really hard to fix up the clean sound of an amp that can't naturally do it.

Or at least, that's my opinion - and I guess that's putting me basically into that second camp. Which is why I'm probably gonna end up buying this:

The Fender Twin Reverb. I'm about 51% on this right now. Everybody says this is the reference amp for "the Fender sound" and the best clean amp in the business. I've heard it and I agree, it is the best sounding clean amp I've heard. And as top-end amps go these days, it's not really that expensive. A high-end Marshall or Orange amp will run up to $3,000; the Fender Twin costs about $1,400 new. Still probably overpriced, but not as bad as the competition. (If I buy one, I'll try to get it for less.)

I could still change my mind, especially if anyone's got any suggestions. In fact, originally I was looking at much lower-end amps in the $500-$600 range, but I just wasn't satisfied with any of the options. I had narrowed it down to the Vox AC15C1, Fender Blues Junior NOS, Marshall Haze 40, and Marshall Class 5 at that level. The Marshall Haze is an "everything" amp but it's built like junk and it sounds like crap clean. The Class 5 is built just as poorly although it's a much simpler amp; I did want reverb, though, and an amp that was loud enough to gig with clean before breaking up. The Vox... I dunno, I just don't like Vox, even though a lot of bands I like use their amps. By themselves, I feel like they just sound really compressed and weird.

I had almost settled on the Blues Junior but then had an epiphany and said "screw it, if I'm going to buy a Blues Junior, I may as well sell some stuff and get the Fender amp I really want." And that's the Twin Reverb. With the Twin Reverb, I feel like I'd be set for life. Plenty of bands I like play 15,000 seat arenas with a mic'd up Twin Reverb. (Of course, plenty of bands I like also play those same arenas with Marshall stacks.)

I do think there's a danger in overthinking this. A lot of really famous guitarists picked their gear based on either what was available to them cheap, or what their favorite bands played. And most of them stuck with the sounds they grew up with - if not the actual brands - as they got older and more famous. There wasn't a lot of thinking involved, at least initially, and a lot of the thought put into it later was on how to refine what they'd already achieved, not how to get an all-new sound. (I admit I'm biased by my favorite bands too - though there is also this, which is just a whole lotta Marshall.)

We'll see. I'll post an update when I actually buy something - who knows, maybe it'll be something I haven't even found yet!

Japan trip 3/2012 - the roundup

2012-04-09T16:55:00.004-04:00

I love the blog format but it's annoying how there's no good way to organize things by tag in Blogger. (Clicking a tag just acts as a filter on the main blog page.) So now that I'm basically calling my latest Japan trip report done, here's my manual post roundup - now in forward chronological order:

Japan 3/2012 - the plan so far (it mostly all worked out!)
Day 1 - Kobe Beef
Day 2 - Haneda Airport as a tourist
Day 2 - Guitar Shopping in Ochanomizu
Day 2 - Shibuya
Day 3 - SC MAGLEV and Railway Park
Day 3 - Yokohama Chinatown
Day 4 - @home Maid Cafe
Day 4 - Hooters Tokyo
Day 5 - SCANDAL vs. BUDOKAN concert report
Day 6 & 7 - Hiroshima Peace Park and Museum
Day 7 - Miyajima Island and Hiroshima Castle

And some extra posts:

I'm always a little sad to be done writing - the trip is really in the past now. And this was one of the more fun ones we've had. We did even more stuff too (I was actually there 8 1/2 days and took 1,183 pictures), but believe it or not, I don't write about everything!

If you're interested in these posts, keep checking back because next up is a top 10 list of everything I've ever done there, in 13 years worth of visits. At this point my wife and I have tried pretty much all the major tourist attractions (in Tokyo) and even many things off the beaten path, so I think it'll be useful for those planning a trip to see what's really worth it and what isn't.

Shining Sun

2012-04-08T04:02:00.002-04:00

A little diversion while I write up my last couple trip report posts - I am obsessed with this song right now:

SCANDAL - Shining Sun from Rem LiveStation on Vimeo.

Now that I'm back in NYC I've basically forgotten about AKB48 and am listening to nothing but SCANDAL again. I haven't worn this DVD out yet (it's new to me!). I love it when bands play little-known b-sides that are basically throwaway pop songs and turn them into something great live...

(I just wish whoever captured this didn't cut off the beginning! It's not like there are a bunch of different versions of this clip around...)

This DVD feels like a whole other era compared with what I saw at Budokan, even though it was only 18 months ago... and I think I like this better.

Random thoughts and picture dump: Japan trip 3/2012

2012-04-07T19:50:00.000-04:00

It's about time to just do a little cleanup - some little snippets of thoughts and photos I took over the past couple weeks that didn't fit anywhere else.

Apparently, "American cherries" are just black cherries. Still something funny about it to me.

Lots of these in the subway this time. Eventually they'll be all over Japan, to prevent scenes like this.

Why a picture of some random mall? It's not a mall, it's Haneda Airport! Actually one of the more impressive airports I've seen - way more interesting than Narita.

Do not taunt Crunky Ball.

Lots of these signs around Tokyo, to thank everyone for the support after the earthquake.

(I hadn't noticed the "no goods, no life" sign in the background until now.)

If I ever move to Tokyo, I want to live at the Hanzomon Bain-Douche.

That can't possibly be a name.

Some Japanese cities have these crazy streets that they've blocked off to traffic and stuck a roof over. They go on forever, and the weird thing is there are still cross streets going through this (still under the roof), with walk signals that you have to stop at. It's like being in a mall, and then all of a sudden there's a stoplight with cars coming at you.

One of Hiroshima's old streetcars - I love these things.

Mmmmmm, unlicensed Totoro cake.

This was a crazy bridge at Miyajima's shrine - how do you even use this?? The weird thing was there was absolutely no apparent reason it needed to be built this way - there was just flat land under it.

I showed Haneda airport's observation decks earlier; Narita has a couple as well. (This is not the best one.)

The Grand Prince Akasaka, which I've stayed at twice, is now a ghost hotel. Wonder what they're going to do with it.

The view, again, from our room at the Grand Arc Hanzomon. I love this view; it has everything you could hope to see in Tokyo. Tall buildings (for Tokyo), Tokyo Tower, even a moat. How many hotels give you a view of an honest to goodness moat?

My wife was impressed with the fact that Haneda airport's bathrooms have monitors in the stalls.

Of course I ate my share of McDonald's on the trip - that's how I know I'm in Japan! They still make the best teriyaki burgers. That's a little American Cherry Shake on the left. It was good!

My wife's Beverly Hills Burger was nasty, though. I tried it. Blecch! Avacado and egg do not belong together on a hamburger.

If this pic doesn't look crazy to you, look closer. This is basically an escalator... that's flat! It's like some sort of practical joke, or the beginning of a cartoon punch line.

You can get bagels in Japan, though they're weird. This is a green tea bagel.

You may have heard of Book-Off, Japan's big used bookstore chain. But now they have "Book-Off Bazaars", which have used everything. It's basically just a giant thrift store. This is now my favorite chain of stores in Japan. These are like the size of an average Wal-Mart, and all they have is used stuff of all kinds. It's like if Ebay opened a store.

Yes, that's me walking towards it. (I feel like this looks like a still image from a film about a terrorist who walks into a crowded store and mows everybody down with a machine gun.)

A couple other random thoughts:

I always forget how sick everybody constantly is in Japan. I don't just mean the number of people wearing masks, which is inflated right now because of radiation fears. I mean people actively hacking up mucus all over the place. It always seems to be about 40% of the population whenever I visit, and many of them don't wear masks. I now have a cough myself that I'm convinced I got from someone there.
This was my first trip to Japan where I didn't need three changes of clothes per day due to sweat. I've always gone in summer before. Everywhere felt a little weird to me as a result; there's a different energy in a city in early spring vs. late summer.

Japan Rail Pass and getting around: Japan Trip 3/2012

2012-04-06T18:17:00.000-04:00

I actually love traveling within Japan - unlike the United States, they have not seemingly gone out of their way to make travel the worst experience possible, and consequently people in Japan travel more than we do. I don't generally fly domestically in Japan because it usually doesn't make much sense, but taking the train is fast, convenient, comfortable and really interesting. It's just pleasant, and even fun.

If you've ever gone or planned to go to Japan, then you probably know about the Japan Rail Pass, which gets you a free ride on most JR trains throughout the country, some buses and some ferries. A lot of people recommend it to all tourists as just a matter of course, but I actually don't think it makes financial sense most of the time. It's not cheap, and unless you're planning to visit two or more cities far apart in a short period of time, you're probably not going to make up the cost.

I've been to Japan about 12 times now but this was the first time using a Japan Rail Pass. The math just never worked out before. But we were planning to do a round trip from Tokyo to Hiroshima, and that alone makes a rail pass worth it since the ticket alone costs more than a rail pass.

So we bought a couple for ourselves, and with the savings, we upgraded to a Green Car rail pass.

Here are a couple tips for the rail pass right off the bat:

If you get one, maximize the value - stay at a hotel on a JR line (like the Yamanote line).
Buying a green car pass has added benefits, like fewer sold out trains (so you can book last minute).
Plan your expensive rail trips so they fall within the 7 or 14 day period the pass is valid.
You can select the date your pass validity starts; just tell the JR people when you get it, it doesn't have to start on the same date.
Remember that even with a Green Car pass, you can still only take the second express tier or below of shinkansen service.

When you buy a Japan Rail Pass, you first get this:

That's an exchange order; it looks kind of like an old paper airline ticket inside. This is not a rail pass! It will get you nowhere. When you get to Japan, you need to go to a JR ticket office in a major location like Narita Airport or Tokyo Station and exchange it for this:

That's a rail pass. It's pretty cool; makes a good souvenir (oh, but you will mess it up through use). Has an embossed metallic look to it. Not sure if that's just for the Green Car passes or if the ordinary ones look the same.

With the Japan Rail Pass, you can basically just hold your pass open and sail right on through any manned gate at any station. They really just look at the date (in my case, that's the "24 3 31"). For the shinkansen, you do still need to go to a ticket office and get a reserved ticket - though it is free. Japan Rail Passes are non-refundable and again, they are expensive, so I found myself holding onto mine like grim death most of the time. I was constantly checking to make sure I knew where it was.

Here I am with my "Tokaido Shinkansen Sandwich" in one hand and my rail pass in the other. I am holding the rail pass in about 85% of the pictures my wife took of me in Japan. That's about $450 in my right hand, I didn't want to lose it!

We got 7 day passes, which was kind of an issue because we were actually in Japan for 8 days. So we decided to start it on the 2nd day, knowing we'd be taking the shinkansen back from Hiroshima on the 8th day. That meant paying for our own transportation from Narita to Tokyo. JR operates the Narita Express (N'EX), but it's expensive if you have to actually pay for it like we did. We ended up taking the Keisei Skyliner, which runs a similar express route but terminates at Ueno (marginally less convenient) and costs half the price. It's a pretty cool train!

Kind of plasticky inside, but still comfortable. Japanese trains all have ridiculous seat pitch. They're shorter than we are on average but they love legroom.

Because our hotel was situated on the Hanzomon line, most of our traveling within Tokyo itself on this trip was actually via the subway - we chose a hotel we liked rather than one that would maximize the value of our rail pass.

Some people say the Tokyo subway is confusing, with its spaghetti-like tangle of lines, some of which are owned by different companies. I'm used to the NYC subway and find Tokyo's pretty easy, though. If you really aren't sure you can figure out a major subway system like this, it pays to just get a good guide book to carry around - because you'll be using it a lot. The subway is the primary way people get around in Tokyo, although you definitely can use JR lines more often if you pick the right hotel and want to use your rail pass.

Having a Japan Rail Pass opens up a new world of about a 300 mile radius around Tokyo to explore. That's how we ended up at the SC MAGLEV and Railway Park; that was an unscheduled day trip to Nagoya via shinkansen that we wouldn't have taken if not for the rail pass. With a rail pass, your constraint is no longer money but time, and the shinkansen trains are fast enough that you can travel a long way, do something in another city, then be back in Tokyo in time for dinner. That's something we hadn't considered on previous trips - it really does give you a lot more freedom.

Traveling by shinkansen in Japan is almost always a great experience. Every major city has a huge centrally located train station, often within walking distance of major hotel clusters. If you choose your hotel right, you can be in your room at 9AM and be on your shinkansen train for a day trip at 9:10. If you're hungry, you can buy a bento box like this directly on the platform:

They come in different types - you can even get sushi! These are made fresh every day, so you don't need to worry.

If you don't buy something at the station, there are car attendants that come through with food carts during the trip. They come through a little more often in the green cars.

There is no security to deal with, and the trains themselves run on time to the second (except when there's bad weather). Most of the time, the train is very quiet - especially if you get a green car. Ordinary cars come sometimes be a little raucus if there's alcohol around (and there often is), but usually the Japanese adhere to the societal norm that all train cars are considered "quiet cars". That means no cell phones, no music playing, no loud conversations.

A little story. On one of our legs this time, there was a group of four people a couple rows in front of us, all businessmen apparently working on the same project. Two were German and two were Japanese. The German guys were carrying on as if they were outside; I felt like I was part of their conversation, they were so loud. At one point, they stood up to talk over the backs of the seats to the Japanese people in their party, who were sitting in front of them. One of the Japanese guys actually ended up telling the Germans to basically sit down and shut up. (A little more politely than that, but that was definitely the gist.) So, if you're planning a trip, just be aware that this is the custom in Japan. Traveling by train is a shared experience and you are not supposed to impose yourself onto others in the train. You will even hear announcements to that effect in English on most trains.

The seats on the shinkansen trains are extremely comfortable (a little moreso in the green cars), and as a 6'4" guy, I have no problem at all - there is plenty of room even to cross my legs. Like American trains (actually even moreso), the seats are actually much bigger than on airplanes so if you're used to seeing airplane seats, it's hard to get a sense of scale from the photo above - there is a lot of legroom. Trains are also designed so the windows exactly line up with the seats, so even though the newer trains have smaller windows, you're still not lacking for a view.

My big pet peeve with the green cars in some of the newer trains is the footrest, which you can't move out of the way and which takes up a lot of floor space. I think the whole idea of "footrests" is stupid - there is already a perfectly good footrest, it's called the floor. I don't see the point in raising my foot 6 inches higher. All the footrest ends up doing is making it so I can't fit my feet under the seat in front of me and really stretch my legs.

I didn't take pictures of it, but the new N700 trains all have power ports at every seat in the green cars, so you can plug in a laptop or charge your cell phone. The slightly older 700 series trains don't have this, but their footrests are slightly smaller so at least there's that. For you trainspotters out there, the Tokaido line is now pretty much entirely 700 and N700 trains, which is kind of boring, but if you go past Osaka, you'll still see the occasional 500 series or even earlier. On the Tokaido line, the N700 trains are mostly used on Nozomi services, so be prepared to deal without seat power if you're riding with a rail pass.

Yes, you do get some spectacular views from the train.

I'll close with just a little bit more about weather. Japanese trains have a deserved reputation for punctuality, but just beware that they do not run equally well rain or shine. In fact, three times now in my twelve or so trips to Japan, we've had major disruptions to our travel plans due to weather. At the end of our trip this time, a freak storm basically knocked out a bunch of lines around Tokyo, including the Joban Line we were trying to take to Sanuki station about 60 miles north. Shinkansen service was also delayed. My wife said it was her worst train experience ever in Japan; we were literally sitting motionless on a train that never left the station for an hour. We then switched to another train that was announced as leaving next, but didn't. We switched to a third and finally got as far as Toride before the train terminated. We had to drive the rest of the way.

If you by chance read my "soundtrack to Japan" post, the pics I took of the AKB48 omiyage box at the end of that post were just me killing time sitting on a stuck Joban Line train. It does happen, even in Japan.

Miyajima Island and Hiroshima Castle: Japan 3/2012 Day 7

2012-04-05T14:47:00.000-04:00

I wrote earlier that there's not really a lot for tourists to do in Hiroshima besides visit the Peace Park, but one thing that's almost another obligation is Miyajima. This island is famous for the Itsukushima Shrine with its "floating" bridges and main island gate, and you see pictures of it all over the place any time someone wants to show a stock view of ancient or traditional Japan. (I believe the gate is even featured in one of Windows 7's default desktop wallpapers.) People will think you're an idiot if you go to Hiroshima and don't visit Miyajima - it's the city's one big non-bomb related tourist attraction.

Getting to Miyajima requires either a very, very long streetcar ride or a slightly shorter ride on the JR Sanyo line, either one of which leaves from Hiroshima Station. Then you hop on the ferry for a short ride across the water to the island. If you have a Japan Rail Pass, the entire trip (including ferry) is free, unless you take the streetcar, in which case it does cost a little money. We actually took the JR line one way and the tram back, because we planned to visit the Peace Museum and Hiroshima Castle afterwards and the tram stops nearby.

The JR Miyajima ferry.

This is a Hiroshima streetcar, though not the one that takes you to Miyajima.

I just like the old ones better, so that's what I have pics of.

Because Miyajima is about an hour outside of Hiroshima City, it was apparently unaffected by the A-bomb. Few traditional temples and shrines in Japan have been untouched since being built, though - they've all been rebuilt multiple times just because they wear out. So even though things look old, and are by American standards, you're usually not seeing pre-medieval artifacts like you might expect. Most of what you see at Miyajima is only a couple hundred years old at most, and some areas are brand new or even under renovation right now. (Hey, it's a wood shrine that's partially submerged in saltwater for half the day; it's not going to last forever.) Just look at the floor boards and railings in the pics below, and of course there's constant painting going on.

Souvenir ticket.

Miyajima's big claim to fame is that its shrine appears to be floating in the water during high tide. Unfortunately for us, we visited during low tide so the illusion was kind of lost on us - its buildings are built on stilts on landfill. It's still a beautiful shrine.

Walking around Miyajima is almost like being in a petting zoo. Deer are considered sacred and there are many of them on the island - and they are used to humans. They will walk right up to you if they're hungry (and they do want your food), and if they're relaxing, they will stay in place if you approach. And yes, you can pet them - although we didn't, because the island is very dusty and many times the deer seemed to be laying in their own poop. We saw plenty of other people petting them, though.

Like at a lot of the more touristy temples and shrines in Japan, there's a cottage industry of souvenir shops and food stalls that have popped up around the island. I'm kind of ambivalent about this. On the one hand, most of what they sell is cheap junk and "Hello Kitty Miyajima" merchandise. On the other, there is food like this:

Oysters, which are a Hiroshima specialty. My wife said these were the best she had ever had.

Not a big oyster eater myself.

Deep fried momiji-manju on a stick! These were soooooooooooo good.

Momiji-manju are another regional specialty - basically a soft maple leaf shaped little pastry stuffed with some sort of gel-like sweet substance. Traditionally it's azuki bean but these days you can get them with chocolate, custard, cheese and a bunch of other things. You can get them all over Hiroshima. Honestly, I can't really recommend one place over another - they all seem pretty good. We only saw the deep-fried ones on Miyajima Island, though. This is their version of a deep-fried Twinkie.

Regular (baked) momiji-manju.

Momiji-manju making machine. You can watch them bake right there, then eat them.

On our way back, we hit the Peace Museum (already written about), the big Book-Off that Hiroshima has, and then Hiroshima Castle. We actually just missed going into the castle - it closed right when we got there - but we saw it from the outside and walked around the grounds.

That is actually the guy inside closing the door to the castle for the day.

Hiroshima Castle is a replica of the original, which was destroyed in the atomic bombing. Many of the buildings on the grounds have just been left as ghostly foundations, but the castle itself was rebuilt in its original style, as were the main gates.

The bridge going into the castle grounds was obviously just rebuilt again, and it's really interesting to see brand new construction in the old world style. Japan is a really modern country but there is a lot of ancient knowledge that has never been lost, and they still know how to do things the same way their ancient ancestors did. I feel like this is actually important - this adds something to the cultural psyche that we in America just don't have. Japan has strong ties to the values and traditions that formed the country thousands of years ago (for better and worse), and this gives them a kind of cultural stability that the United States lacks. We as Americans have no shared cultural foundation; we're still making it up as we go along, constantly searching for something to bind us and increasingly not finding it. I guess this is why Japan makes sense to me in a way that America doesn't.

On the way back to our hotel we stopped for more ramen at the train station:

It was similar to the ramen I'd had the night before. Very thin noodles, Hiroshima style. Nothing on this trip compared to the best ramen I'd had on previous trips, though.

This was basically the end of the vacation part of the trip. The next day we headed back to Tokyo, then off to do some family stuff for a couple days before heading back to New York. This won't be my last post, though - I've still got a few posts on particular topics and then a random roundup post I'd like to do, so still a few more coming!

Hiroshima Peace Park and Museum - Japan 3/2012 Day 6 and 7

2012-04-05T00:36:00.002-04:00

For the last couple days of our trip, we planned kind of a whirlwind tour of Hiroshima. I had never been there and figured I should see it. I will say my feelings about the bombing itself are probably more conflicted than you'd think... and in the hopes of not offending anyone on either side, I'll just leave it at that.

If you have a Japan Rail Pass, traveling from Tokyo to Hiroshima by shinkansen requires a train change at Shin-Osaka station. It's not a big deal and it let me try out the new Sakura shinkansen service from Osaka to Hiroshima - very nice! We had green car tickets but even the "ordinary" cars on these trains are almost as nice as the green cars on the Tokaido line, with four across seating (vs. five across on the Tokaido), wood accents everywhere, etc. The green cars probably have a little more legroom, power ports at every seat, carpeting with "royal" accents and - I'm serious about this - darker wood.

The ordinary cars have kind of a walnut look; the green cars are kitted in "rich mahogany". (Of course, it's all just laminate paneling in both cases.)

We arrived by shinkansen at about 4pm and checked into the Sheraton Hiroshima, right next to Hiroshima Station.

This is a new hotel with big, beautiful rooms and great views of the city and surrounding hills, but really weird bathrooms!

The walls and doors are basically glass that's clear on top and supposedly opaque (but not really) on the bottom. There's also a big gap between the glass panes, so you can hear everything in the shower and toilet. No privacy! This alone would probably discourage me from staying there again, although otherwise it's a great hotel. I have a feeling they're going to have to fix this.

Since we didn't have much time on the first day, we just took a streetcar to the Peace Park and looked at the A-bomb Dome. It's a strange feeling to see it up close; really makes it feel like it didn't happen very long ago. Even all the individual bricks that had fallen off are still strewn around the building. The Peace Park itself is very quiet and somber, though it's really an odd juxtaposition to see the park - knowing that it used to be all city before being leveled in the bombing - and the new city surrounding it, which looks like it could be any city in Japan. One thing I found interesting is that ground zero of the A-bomb explosion is now a surgical clinic and apartment building. I had assumed it was somewhere in the park, but it's not - it's in the rebuilt part of the city, and people live there now.

The following day we finished the Peace Park area by visiting the Peace Museum, which goes into the history leading up to the bombing (there is a little Japanese perspective bias, as you might expect) and also has exhibits of artifacts post-bombing. The one part that really got me was the story of a girl who got radiation-related cancer after the bombing, and she made 1,000 paper cranes in the superstitious belief that this would make her better. They had some of the actual cranes she made there in a little case, and seeing those got me choked up. Of course, she died.

You can take pictures inside the museum, but nobody else was doing it and hearing the loud clap of a shutter release would have seemed out of place. It's completely silent inside, or at least it was when we were there.

The museum itself is not that big so it doesn't take a lot of time to go through it. Afterwards, we went out to eat, but the mood was kind of somber. My wife said she wouldn't want to live in Hiroshima because it's too depressing. I think the people there are probably used to it and don't think about it day to day, but it really is kind of a depressing place as a tourist. It's one of those things you feel obligated to see and do, not that you want to do it. The thing is, there aren't a lot of other things to do in Hiroshima (there are a couple things I'm doing another post on), so most people are probably going to leave just thinking about the city as "the place that got bombed". Today it's a regular city again and it's 60 years on, so it seems that it's a conscious choice the city leaders have made that they want people to think of it that way, in order to build support for ending nuclear proliferation. But just be aware that it does make it kind of a dark, sad place. I wish we'd done it when we first got here, rather than just before having to go back to work and stress.

We did get to try some Hiroshima-style ramen on the way back to the hotel on the first night:

Their ramen is characterized by super-thin noodles.

Yokohama Chinatown: Japan 3/2012 Day 3

2012-04-04T02:33:00.002-04:00

After our ultimately annoying trip to the SC MAGLEV and Railway Park, we decided to hit up Yokohama's Chinatown on the way back from Nagoya for some pork buns. This is the great thing about the Japan Rail Pass - it does give you options like this (more on the rail pass later!).

Yokohama Chinatown is famous for its giant steamed pork buns. Neither one of us had ever been there to vouch for this, but it was apparently on TV. So the plan was to hop off the shinkansen, jot on down to Chinatown, eat a pork bun on the street, then hop back on the shinkansen the rest of the way to Tokyo Station. After leaving the railway museum in Nagoya at about 2PM, we thought we were going to be way early and would probably even make it to Tokyo in time for a real dinner.

What we didn't realize is that Chinatown is actually kind of a long way from the Shin-Yokohama train station. There are a few ways to get there, but we didn't realize the best one until it was too late - you can take the JR Yokohama Line to Yokohama, transfer to the JR Negishi line and get off at Ishikawacho. That way, if you have a rail pass, it's free. Instead, after some confused backtracking we transferred to the private Minatomirai Line to Motomachi-Chūkagai Station - which puts you closer to Chinatown, but costs money. We ended up getting to Chinatown at about 7PM. Once you're there, finding the food is easy - just follow the signs to the main gate.

These are dumplings they also sell on the street - I'm not sure what they're called, but they're like shumai. I liked these a lot, although I made the dumb mistake of putting a whole one in my mouth and biting down - not advisable unless you have a bucket of ice water handy! You're supposed to crack the top open, then slurp the soup out, then nibble on it once it's basically dry inside.

I'm pretty sure these were the guys making the dumplings. I don't know why they need to be outfitted like surgeons. I don't think we even noticed it at the time.

Here's one of the big pork buns - it doesn't look so big with my freakishly large hand holding and pointing at it, but if I showed you the photo of my wife holding one up to her face, you'd have a different impression. We picked the place we bought them from randomly - there are a million of them selling out onto the street, so there's really no way to know what's a "good" one unless you know somebody who's tried various ones. But I doubt there's much difference anyway; they all look basically the same and with that much competition, I don't think they could all survive if one was much better than another.

Was it worth it? I dunno, my wife thought so. I enjoyed the overall experience, but the pork bun itself was not really anything special. I remember having some buns like this in a really weirdly themed Chinese restaurant in Shinjuku a few years back that were just as good. I don't really think you need to go to Yokohama to get these... unless we just picked a place that was below average. (I really think they're probably pretty much all the same, though; they're like Chinese takeout places in New York, they all have the same stuff and make it the same way.)

Chinatown itself did have a pretty cool atmosphere; it's a more upscale version of the one I'm used to in NYC.

From Chinatown, we realized it was actually going to be faster to hop on the Keihin-Tohoku line to get back to Tokyo. This is a local train (and with no green cars), but you need to go backwards to catch the shinkansen, then wait for it, then take the subway to the hotel anyway. So we hopped on the local train and got back to our hotel at about 10PM. A longer day than we'd planned!

Hooters Tokyo: Japan trip 3/2012 Day 4

2012-04-03T17:57:00.000-04:00

Oh, where to start with this one?? On our fourth night in Tokyo, my wife and I went to Hooters. Let me just talk about Hooters in general for a minute. In my experience, most of its biggest critics have never been there - it is basically just a sports bar. The clientele is always mixed; guys going out after work, couples on dates, even groups of women. Obviously the gimmick is waitresses in tight t-shirts and hot pants, but seriously, this isn't all that much different from what some Japanese girls wear anyway.

Ok, I admit it looks like kind of a sausage fest in this photo, but I swear, just off to the left there was one couple and one group of three women together.

This same location is variously known as Hooters Tokyo, Hooters Japan and Hooters Akasaka. I was curious to see how the, uh, food - yeah, that's it - compared with the Hooters I've been to in Portland, Oregon.

The interesting thing is that it is almost exactly the same experience. Most American chains that come to Japan successfully have to make changes for Japanese tastes. For example, 7-11 in Japan carries all sorts of different breads (one of the things I miss most in the US), they sell concert tickets, they have their own bank. But Hooters' menu is pretty much the same, from what I remember, between Japan and the US. And the decorations are too - they've got lots of college football memorabilia spread around, and they were showing NASCAR on one of the monitors.

Here's one way you know you're in Japan.

Even the girls had a western style body type, if there is such a thing - they had that muscular yet voluptuous look for the most part that otherwise isn't very common in Japan, although all but one of the waitresses working the night we went were Japanese (my wife asked!) and the other was Filipino. Some of the girls there actually spoke pretty decent English. They must expect - if not actually get - a lot of westerners. I didn't see any other than me when we were there, though.

They were holding a "Miss Hooters Japan" contest while we were there - I voted for Airi! Three of the girls in this photo were working the night we were there. Our waitress was named Ikumi; she wasn't in the contest.

The food was actually pretty good! This is one difference from America - the food at the Hooters in Portland was some of the worst I have ever had out. I ordered a teriyaki burger and my wife got fish and chips - both were perfectly normal and edible and didn't taste like they had been steaming in a big vat in the back for several weeks.

My wife's fish and chips.

I picked up a couple souvenirs on the way out:

I actually wanted a t-shirt but Airi told me they didn't have XL (they normally do, it was just sold out). The magazine's better, though, because I probably wouldn't wear the t-shirt, and for buying the magazine I got to use the coupon inside that let me get the mug free! The magazine is basically like Maxim; it's just got a bunch of articles related to Hooters and pictorials of some of the girls (not all of whom actually work there; some are just famous idols, like one of the girls from idol group SDN48). I was worried it was going to have a lot of American content, but it is at least all local.

We went at around 6PM and had to wait in a short line - I wouldn't go much later than that if you don't want to wait longer (unless you go very late). Like a lot of things in Tokyo, Hooters is not that easy to stumble across by accident - it's on the second floor of the shopping center at Hotel Excel Tokyu in Akasaka. The sign is not easily visible from the street, and you'd never walk by it otherwise, but the hotel itself and shopping center are obvious, so just go to the second floor and then walk to the far end on the outside.

Gotta admit, it was fun!

The soundtrack to Japan - SCANDAL, and the AKB48 phenomenon

2012-04-01T03:30:00.000-04:00

I wrote after my last trip that every visit to Japan so far has come with its own soundtrack. On my last trip it was AKB48, just because you *can't* get away from them; on other past trips it's been Utada Hikaru, Kimura Kaela and Puffy.

This time it was obviously mostly Scandal, who I saw play live at Budokan and also bought these four items from:

I have all their albums as mp3's, but wanted to get them on disc (with the included DVD's). I scored three out of four (two new, one used), plus one live DVD that I bought new. I did find their first CD with DVD also - the real Japanese release of which is quite rare - but it was too expensive (3980 yen for a used copy). If you've read any of my blog in the past few months, you know that I really genuinely like Scandal - there's no hype about them to get caught up in. I seek them out myself.

AKB48, on the other hand, is just absolutely everywhere here, and as much as I wanted this trip to be about Scandal, you just cannot avoid AKB48 even if you try. This is still the soundtrack to Japan for most Japanese right now. And goddammit, their marketing just works on me:

I didn't buy as much as I bought from Scandal but I did buy these two things, their latest single (used) and DVD. Honestly the DVD is kind of lame and half-assed and I regret buying it, but oh well. Not like I can return it. Buyer beware. Maybe I'll Ebay it.

Japan seems to be moving towards an almost entirely AKB48-based economy. I've been trying to think of how to describe this phenomenon to bemused Americans and the best analogy I can come up with is this: imagine taking every season of American Idol and putting all the contestants into one big super-group (minus the guys, because really, nobody here cares), who themselves are then divided into sub-groups with different specialties. Then you dress them all up in skimpy outfits and make them dance while they sing. Imagine how popular that would be.

But that's basically what it is; it's not just a singing group, it's a system. An entire industry to itself. Individual girls are allowed to rise to stardom themselves, and that means you see them literally everywhere, from TV commercials to subway posters to banners on the street to even my Hooters magazine (more on this later!), which has a pictorial from one of the girls in sub-group SDN48.

This is Tomomi Itano in a 30 foot high ad for some cell phone thing.

Can't remember the names of these girls, but I think this is also

an ad for some mobile phone service.

Well, obviously.

This is the line outside of the AKB48 cafe at 11:30AM. It's not like it got shorter later...

This is the line (left to right) to get into the AKB48 theater, at around noon. The show starts at something like 6PM. (Incidentally, I applied to get into this show and didn't make it...)

When we went to a used record store one day and I joked that their time was over because I didn't see any of their stuff in the alphabetical listing, my wife said "well, I'm sure they have their own section", and sure enough, they had an *entire rack* devoted just to them - despite only four years or so on the scene. I discovered later that this is common at many stores. Even all the guitar stores we went to had big AKB48 sections, where you could buy the guitars they're playing on that CD pictured above! (And they do actually play on that song.)

And this is not even half of the rack, nor was this the biggest one I saw!

It's gotten hard for other individual singers to even break through outside of AKB48. I'm not even sure this is a fad anymore (as Morning Musume and earlier idol groups were); there are so many popular individual AKB48 girls now that they're collectively going to be around for many years even if AKB48 as a group dissolved today.

Some cracks appeared in the foundation while we were here, though - Maeda Atsuko, one of the founding and most popular members (and the main girl on the CD cover above), announced during a live concert that she was "graduating". That's a euphemism here for either quitting or being fired, but there's no way she was fired. This was the top national news story for three days while we were here, with a lot of people questioning AKB48's future. (Some of the group's founding members are reaching an age considered "old" for being in an idol group in Japan, though not Maeda Atsuko - she brought the average age of the group down.)

It put the whole country into even more of an AKB48 frenzy, which we - ok, really I - couldn't escape.

Japan also has this tradition of "omiyage", which are little gifts you buy wherever you go for all your friends and family. Usually it takes the form of some sort of regional food item in a box. I was actually quite impressed with this one, it's quite cute! "AKB48 Tokyo Pastel Sandwich" - even came with its own bag:

The cakes tasted good too! (Yes, I bought it for my wife and myself.)

SC MAGLEV & Railway Park: Japan 3/2012 Day 3

2012-03-31T20:23:00.001-04:00

Who loves bullet trains? Everyone loves bullet trains! Japan is one of the most mobile countries on Earth, and trains are everywhere. So there are a lot of rail museums and other related exhibits spread around the country. The SC MAGLEV and Railway Park is one of the newest, owned and operated by JR themselves (imagine Amtrak opening their own railway museum). We'd already gone to Haneda Airport as tourists, so now it was rail's turn.

This museum sits in an industrial town outside of Nagoya - I can't say why they picked that location, as it's kind of a trek to get there (but mostly "free" if you have a Japan Rail Pass!) and as close to the middle of nowhere as you can get in a city like this. From Nagoya station, you need to take the Aonomi line to the last stop, and as this is not a JR line, you can't use your rail pass on it. Better eat beforehand - more on this in a minute!

Aonomi line train

There is a pretty amazing bridge right by the museum; this is actually only half of it:

The railway park has a bunch of old and recently-retired trains - from the steam and early electric eras to modern shinkansen/bullet trains. I was pretty interested in seeing some of the more recent shinkansens that were running the first time I went to Japan - my first ride was on a 100 series from Tokyo to Yokohama, about a 15 minute ride! These were the last shinkansen trains to run with dining cars, and I had never seen inside one before.

Overview of the main hall

100 and 0 series shinkansen trains

300 series shinkansen

From my second trip to Japan - 0, 200, 100 and 300 series shinkansen,

all (mostly) retired now

The "MAGLEV" part of the museum basically consists of a single test vehicle that's sitting in the "experimental" section leading in to the main hall. There's also a steam engine here and a 300X series shinkansen test car. The rest of the museum is just that - a museum, dedicated mostly to the past, with some information on current technology as well.

The experimental hall

The nice thing is you can actually go into most of the trains at the museum (there are a few at the end of the hall that are just for show). All of them are just immaculate inside, practically like new. Even the ancient wooden cars look like they were just built.

100 series dining/restaurant car

0 series buffet car

Not sure what this is - a very old all wood car! Looks new!

The big negative about the whole experience is the crowds, and the lack of crowd management. We went on a Monday - not a day you'd expect to be particularly busy - and the place was just overrun with people. (My photos don't really convey this well.) Worse, the museum literally ran out of food. We went up to the little cafe they have (which is far too small - there was spillover of people eating all throughout the second floor) at around 1PM and there was a long line of people waiting for an emergency delivery of lunch food. We ended up deciding to just wait and get food somewhere else.

The last thing I really wanted to see was this supposedly amazing model railroad that's either the biggest in Japan or the world (I know there's one in Germany that is/was the biggest, but this museum's very new so maybe it's now bigger). The problem, again, was the crowd management. There was a line to get in to this area so long that it was totally maxed out - and they were giving every group of people *30 minutes* inside. Again, we decided it wasn't worth waiting 30 minutes just to get in the line, then 30 more in the line itself.

Apparently this museum has been a lot more popular than JR anticipated - they expected 500,000 people last year and got 1.1 million. Still, I got that info from their own press release - they should be expecting the crowds now. Get some more food, add some more tables and chairs, cut down the time allowed in the model railroad area to 10 or 15 minutes, raise the price of entry. It doesn't seem like rocket science to me, just simple supply and demand.

We went outside hoping for some food, but no dice - there's literally nothing around. I remembered seeing a McDonald's two stops back on the Aonomi line, so we actually got off there and finally ate. At the same stop, there is the biggest Book Off I have ever seen - they have everything, even used guitars - and I picked up a Nintendo Game & Watch reissue there for 1950 yen, so the day was a success after all!

Overall, I'd really only recommend the SC MAGLEV and Railway Park for real diehards right now. Hopefully JR will get their act together at some point and manage the crowds a little better. If you do go, try to manage the day and time - Monday was bad already, but I can't even imagine what it would be like on a weekend.

@home cafe: Japan 3/2012 Day 4

2012-03-31T09:57:00.000-04:00

A few years back, my wife and I went to our first maid cafe in Akihabara. We were kind of embarrassed at that point, though we both really did want to go (my wife's pretty liberal, she likes stuff like this). We ended up at Maid Station (now closed), which was a neat place catering to video game nerds, but I always wanted to go back and try one that was just completely over the top with the maid experience. So this time, we went to the @home cafe, which is one of the oldest and definitely the most famous maid cafe in Akihabara. (Their web site claims "2 million served.")

There is an @home cafe at Don Quijote, the same building housing the AKB48 theater, but we went to the main location nearer to Akihabara station, ironically because it's a little quieter. @home takes up four floors of the Mitsuwa building, a couple with different themes but a couple just regular, with spillover space. Supposedly it does get very crowded on nights and weekends. We found a guy inside who was a regular and recommended the sixth floor to us, because he said it had the cutest girls.

Unfortunately they don't allow photos inside (they want to sell them to you), so I didn't take any of the cafe, the food or the girls. But we did get photos with the girls that we paid for (further down).

Since it was opening time on a weekday, there weren't many people there yet and we had no problem getting in right away. About eight or nine girls work a room that seats maybe 25 people, so they give really personal service. Our maid went through everything on the menu with us and explained all the things they would do depending on what we order. For example, order the "PIPIYOPIYOPIYO♪HIYOKOSAN RICE" and they will make a cute design in ketchup on it for you. Order the "MAZEMAZE MOMOIRO SPAGETTI" (I really wish they gave souvenir menus), and they will stir it while chanting "moe moe moe KYUN!" You need to chant this with them while doing a little choreography that they teach you, and they'll bring another girl over to help out so it ends up being three or four people chanting and doing a little dance. It's funny.

They sell a set meal that comes with two courses, a drink and a souvenir photo for something like 3,000 yen, so we ordered that.

While we waited for our food, a different girl came over to talk to us and pass the time. This is part of their job - to stand there and talk to you while looking cute. She just happened to have visited New York a few weeks earlier and had seen a bunch of Broadway shows, so we actually had some stuff we could talk about.

You only get an hour to eat, then they supposedly kick you out if you haven't left on your own. Every hour, they do a little skit on the stage in front, which is just a janken (rock/paper/scissors) game with the customers set to cute music and with a lot of over the top squeals and laughter. Whoever wins gets a free photo with one of the girls. They take all of the photos on the stage in front of everyone. So the whole thing is kind of a shared experience with all the people there.

Of course they personalize the photos with cute little sayings and other writing.

I blur my wife out because she values her privacy. I blur myself out because I look like an idiot.

Before we left, another girl came over with a souvenir bag that included a set of @home candies, a sticker, the photo we had each bought and a point card. I'm not really sure what you get with higher levels on the point card, but the cards themselves are pretty funny.

Feel free to embiggen that so you can read it.

The sticker and candies:

Because there was no line (though it was pretty full by the time we left), they were pretty relaxed about our "hour" - they didn't bring our dessert until about 55 minutes in and they never tried to kick us out. When we did leave, though, all the girls lined up to literally yell thank you and goodbye at us. It was very cute!

Oh, and about the food - honestly, I've learned you don't go to a maid cafe for the food but ours was really not bad. Omelette rice is a simple dish that's hard to mess up, and mine was fine. My wife said her spaghetti was actually pretty good. Our desserts were above average - I got a chocolate cake and my wife got a *huge* parfait that was also really tasty. It was a lot better than the corn flake tiramisu at Maid Station!

SCANDAL vs. BUDOKAN show report: Japan 3/2012 Day 5

2012-03-29T08:34:00.000-04:00

I'm jumping around a bit here with my trip report, but one thing I've learned with show reviews is you've gotta do them while you still feel it. Otherwise it's like a dream; it's fleeting, and you forget too much. Also, a warning: you are about to read a report from a fanboy. It is incredibly detailed and quite long. Feel free to skip it if this does not sound appealing.

Tonight was the SCANDAL show at Nippon Budokan! This was the centerpiece of this trip for me, and I'd been looking forward to it for a long time. How often does a person from overseas get to see one of their favorite Japanese bands at Budokan? It's rare for most bands to even get the chance to play there, and then for me to just happen to be here at the same time and be able to actually get tickets from the United States, well, it's almost impossible. Everything had to line up perfectly, and it did.

I've actually been following Scandal since probably 2009, just after their major label debut. They were a different band back then; really young and raw and I thought of them as more of a curiosity - these Japanese girls dressed up in school uniforms playing hard rock music. What's not to like about that?? But I didn't really take them seriously, and their music - while good - was basically stuff high school kids make with Garage Band.

Today they're a real professional rock band, with all that that entails - actual competence at playing their instruments, glossy production, hair and makeup stylists, custom clothing designers and all that jazz. They're also pretty confident on stage. They've lost some of their edge but it's not embarrassing anymore to admit that I like them - they look, sound and play like a band that should be filling arenas. And now they are.

This was my first concert in Japan, and as I expected, it was a different kind of experience vs. an American show!

We arrived at about 4:45PM for a 5:30PM door opening. I didn't really know why we even needed to get there early at all since we had assigned seats, but I knew the Japanese like to line up, so I figured we may as well get in it. I was glad we got there at least a bit early, because they had the merchandise tables set up outside the arena and had started selling some time before - they were already sold out of various things, including several items I wanted. I did manage to get a t-shirt in large (which I doubt will fit me), a photo book and obviously the bag to put everything in - which you had to buy for 500 yen. Picked up a few gifts too.

This is a stitched together panorama photo of Budokan when we got there - the main merchandise tables were on the left. On the right was a smaller booth selling their CD's and DVD's, plus a table where you could sign up to join their official fan club. (I almost did it! But it's 5,000 yen, and the main benefit you get is early access to show tickets. It's doubtful I'll ever have the chance to use that again.)

Incidentally, if you're wondering what kind of fans Scandal has in Japan, it was a pretty even mix between guys and girls, and even young and old (definitely more young than old, but I saw more than a few middle aged people there - and not all of them were with their kids!). It wasn't just a bunch of nerdy anime fans or perverted guys or alternately a bunch of girly girls. It was just regular people, most a bit cooler and more fashionable than average. It was like walking through Harajuku at any given moment. A lot of the girls there were obviously trying to look like the band.

We finally lined up for the opening - as always in Japan, the lines were completely organized and snaked around without any sort of line management system. People just know how to line up here. We ended up near the front anyway - here's the view of the front of the line (I actually think this is kind of a crazy pic - imagine somebody falling backwards!):

As my ticket was taken, a guy came up to me and asked if I had a camera. I said yes and was forced to check it. They weren't asking everyone - someone must have seen me snap the pic of the line. Japan is still really strict with pictures at concerts, so I didn't get any during the show itself. I really didn't see anyone trying to buck this rule either, so I wasn't going to chance it even though I still had my cell phone (which I can't be without!). There will be a DVD of this show soon enough... here's a three minute clip I found in the meantime, so you can see some footage (with really poorly mixed sound):

Haruna's wearing circle lenses! They all look very, very cute, don't you think? It's almost too much! Haruna's a badass no matter how she's styled, though.

I'll try to describe the stage setup. It was actually a pretty standard Japanese arena stage. The north side seats (including NE and NW) were completely blocked/draped over because the stage was either in front of or directly to the side of them. The stage itself had a standard full-width front stage and (if I remember right) a slightly smaller raised back section with staircases leading up. In front of the main stage was a smaller platform connected by an elevated "runway". The girls' positions were marked with large orange stars that glowed under certain types of light. Two large monitors allowed those on the upper floors to see what was going on at ground-level, and four large connected monitors backed the rear stage as well.

We were seated on the East side, row K, seats 22 and 23. Middle quality seats - not great, but there were a lot of people further away than we were. I can't complain given that we paid regular price and managed to buy our tickets from the US. We did have to watch the monitors a lot; I couldn't really make out anyone's face from where we were. The arena was full - it was a sellout (in 15 minutes!) - though oddly enough, the people next to us never showed up. They were the only empty seats I could see in the entire arena.

The show started nearly on time, at 6:35PM. No opening band. I appreciate this - there's just way too much waiting at American shows. At Japanese shows (this one plus others I've read about), you get there, you sit down, the show starts.

Here's the set list for the show (aped from Scandal Heaven, who aped it from Scandal Mania):

1. SCANDAL no Theme
2. Shunkan Sentimental
3. EVERYBODY SAY YEAH
~MC
4. BEAUTeen!!
5. Shoujo S
6. LOVE SURVIVE
7. Hi-Hi-Hi
~RINA drum solo
8. SCANDAL Nanka Buttobase (dance)
~MC(Candid Timo)
9. Pride
10. Haruka
11. BURN
12. Switch
13. Aitai
~MC
14. HARUKAZE
15. SAKURA Goodbye
16. Hello! Hello!
17. Taiyou to kimi ga Egaku STORY
18. SCANDAL BABY

Encore
1. Space Ranger
2. Kagerou
3. DOLL

The show actually opened with a "SCANDAL vs. BUDOKAN Title Match" video, that was intended to be funny and kind of was but I really just wanted them to get on with it. The first real song, Shunkan Sentimental, opened with a bang - literally. So much pyrotechnics that we could feel the heat on the second level! The band was wearing some very Harajuku-ish pop punk fashion - I've never seen them dressed like that before; they looked very cute, although some of their fans (including me, sometimes) probably wish they still just wore the uniforms. They were all wearing wireless headset mics so they could move around - also unusual for them (and Tomomi seemed uncomfortable with hers all night).

The entire first set (up to Rina's drum solo) just totally rocked, and I've never seen an arena crowd so into a show before. Japanese crowds are amazing in exactly the way I thought they might be. They go totally nuts in a completely organized way. They will come up with a collective action totally spontaneously. It's like being in an unrehearsed line dance, but somehow everybody knows what to do. I just tried to keep up, and I think I did a pretty good job of it. But it was amazing to look around the arena and see everyone doing the same thing, at the same time, whether it was pumping their fists in the air, waving their arms back and forth, chanting (that's the one thing I had trouble with), or whatever. Absolutely no one just stood there and watched, or did their own little individual dance. Everybody went with the crowd.

During Shoujo S, the band used the raised rear stage to show off their choreography - I was so happy they did this, because the choreography for that song is just such a perfect match for it and that video is one of the first things I ever saw from them. They didn't do a lot of choreography tonight but there seem to be a few songs with choreography that they must just like, and they did do it for those songs. They were dancers first before they were a band, so they must just enjoy it sometimes.

Rina's drum solo allowed for a wardrobe change for the other three members. It was a long drum solo that she used to rile up the crowd with some audience participation, while throwing in some of the cuteness that she's known for - several times she'd stop and just toss in a few randomly cute facial expressions to get the crowd on her side. She's a better drummer than I thought she was, but honestly her solo went on a little too long.

She followed this up with a pretty lengthy monologue by herself. When the other girls returned, they had changed into some faux-Yanqui outfits, which somehow sort of suits them and their tough Osaka street image, though it's not the sexy look they're known for and that most of the crowd was probably hoping to see. Now it was Rina's turn to take a break while the rest of the band did a full-on dance number; rather than playing "SCANDAL Nanka Buttobase", they instead just did all the choreography from the video as it played on the screens in the background. It was fun to just watch them dance for one song.

When Rina returned, there was a long MC section as the girls bantered back and forth about some pyrotechnics Rina had set off at the end of her drum solo, with the joke being that the rest of the band had tricked Tomomi into paying for it. Eh. Long setup, not a big payoff. By the end of this, it had literally been about 30 minutes since the band had played a single note of music together. And what followed was a series of songs that, while all good mid-tempo songs, were obviously intended to give the girls kind of a break and help them make it through a long set. And the audience calmed down a lot too.

Luckily, things did build again towards the end, as the crowd sensed the end was coming and the band started throwing in some more up-tempo songs to bring the energy back up. By the time they started up "SCANDAL BABY", everyone was back in frenzy mode. From what I remember - and it's now the next night as I finish writing this - they brought up the arena lights completely during this song so the audience and band could feel closer together. Definitely one of the highlights of the night.

Of course there were encores, with the girls having changed into their tour t-shirts (as Japanese bands generally do during encores). They played three of their oldest songs, and they all moved to the little sub-stage in front of the main stage. They said that while this was a special night and it was great playing a big arena, they wanted to bring back the feeling of playing some of their early club shows. So they set up a small stage in the middle of the crowd and simplified the light show. It was just them out there jumping around in a very small space. I'm sure this was great if you were on the floor but for us up on the second level, it didn't really translate well. The cool part about it was hearing them play these really early songs, though. Like going to see Pink Floyd and hearing them play "Bike" or something.

And, that was that. The show overall lasted about 2 1/2 hours, but I was sad when it was over - I wanted more! I don't know when I'll ever be able to see them again, though I did get some nice souvenirs and of course, the memories. There will be a DVD and I'm actually pretty confident I'll be pretty easy to pick out in some of the crowd shots (I am a big, goofy American guy in a sea of Japanese.) Here are some pics of the swag I picked up:

T-shirt front and back, bag and photo book.

Some random shots from after the show - flowers people had sent them, and then the nearly-empty merchandise tables:

Haneda Airport: Japan 3/2012 Day 2

2012-03-27T04:11:00.003-04:00

Yep, it's day 4 for me now, but I'm still writing about day 2 - I'll get caught up eventually!

Tokyo International Airport - aka Haneda - may seem an odd choice for a tourist attraction, but truthfully we've done all the "normal" stuff in years past. You can read about things like Tokyo Tower, Roppongi Hills, Asakusa and whatever else in my other Japan trip reports. (I've also done a bunch of even touristier stuff I apparently never got around to writing about - Imperial Palace, National Museum and such.) I really do probably have enough material to write a book on things to do in Tokyo at this point. But airports are the megastructures of the modern age, and as with anything else, the Japanese always go way over the top with them. I'd never been to Haneda before (it's still mainly a domestic airport) and my wife had heard there was good food there(?!) So we decided to check it out.

It's pretty cool even just getting there, because the easiest way is via the Tokyo Monorail. This is a neat little attraction on its own - like the Yurikamome Line, it snakes its way through Tokyo at about 10 stories off the ground. You can get some good sightseeing in just sitting on the monorail. And seriously, other than Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, how many cities really have monorails these days?

This is the monorail in action, as it pulls into the airport. It's quite hard to see but if you look closely, you can actually just make out Mount Fuji in the far background. (Look for the outline of a snow-capped mountain in the right half of the photo.)

A view from the monorail - not the best view, but the only photo I took:

By the way, the tip of Tokyo Tower is still bent.

Haneda's now got three terminals - Terminal 1, Terminal 2, and the brand new International Terminal. We went to all three.

This is the entrance from the monorail into the International Terminal.

This terminal's got a little "town" inside that's styled after traditional Japan. The town has shops and restaurants.

Not just typical airport shops and restaurants either - actual real stuff. I guess this is what my wife had heard about - we ended up eating in this area.

This is pork katsu - which is really just Japanglish for "cutlet". It was so freakin' good. This is one of those places where they cook right in front of you, and you can see exactly what they're doing. Everything was very fresh tasting, and the breading was so crispy and light. And the pork was just beautiful; very tender and flavorful. This was not an expensive lunch, either (well, relatively speaking); about $20 per person, I think. I don't remember the name of this place but like everywhere in Japan, all the restaurants in this area put pictures of their food outside, so it's pretty easy to find by just looking for something like this. I remember it was on the left side of this little town, if you decide to check it out.

Haneda has at least two terminals with outdoor observation decks - they haven't gone absolutely batshit crazy with fear like we have. (American airports used to have observation decks too; now you're lucky if you don't get arrested for taking pictures of airplanes from the parking lot.) These are no joke either; they're huge, spanning the entire width of the terminal, and set up specifically for people to be able to take pictures and video, with little holes in the wire fencing to stick your camera lens through.

Both of these were taken from the Terminal 2 observation deck. I actually saw three 787's in a one hour span, including one landing and one taking off! The great thing about outdoor observation decks is the sound - I actually took some video too, which I'll post later.

This is one half of the International Terminal observation deck. This deck looks inward towards the other terminals and control tower, and I actually liked it better than T2's deck (despite the photos above).

This is Terminal 2's deck, which is located above ANA's international gates and has a view of one runway and the city of Tokyo behind it (it's to the left, out of this photo).

Anyone can just walk into the airport and out onto these observation decks. No security checks needed.

Terminal 2's got a lot of shops inside too - basically an entire upscale mall - and a lot of interesting architectural details.

Terminal 1 was not quite as cool - though it is huge and impressive in that way.

That's half of Terminal 1's check-in area. I was standing near the middle when I took this - there's kind of a divider just behind me here and then another half that looks just like this going in the other direction.

T1 doesn't have as much stuff for non-fliers to do - I couldn't find an observation deck and there aren't as many shops on the pre-security side. So we didn't spend much time there, and you could probably even skip it.

But overall, it was a pretty fun and surprising little trip! We thought we'd be there an hour or so but we ended up spending 4 hours at the airport. Great views, impressive architecture, great photo opportunities, great food and shopping... not much more a tourist could really ask for.

Guitar shopping in Ochanomizu: Japan 3/2012 Day 2

2012-03-26T19:26:00.000-04:00

I'm starting to fall behind on my trip posts a bit - let's see if I can catch up. Really just haven't had time to write! Anyway, this post may only appeal to my guitar playing friends and Googlers, but that's ok.

On my second day here my wife and I went guitar shopping in Ochanomizu, which has clearly become Tokyo's guitar store area. If that sounds oddly specific, well, this area's apparently used to that - a few years back, the same neighborhood was known as Tokyo's ski shop area. Some of those same shops are now guitar stores. My wife says there are a couple universities around so it's always been a very fad-based neighborhood, and right now a lot of Japanese want to learn to play guitar because of various pop bands that have started featuring instruments and made it seem like anybody can do it. (Almost every store had giant AKB48 displays, for example, which is ridiculous!)

Which is not to say that all of these stores are new or that nobody ever wanted to seriously learn to play here before. But playing guitar here is now trendy again and that's allowed a few new shops to open up, which makes it feel like the area's just been overrun by cheap guitars and budding musicians.

About a dozen guitar stores line the street just outside the Ochanomizu train station - you can't miss them.

I went looking for one specific guitar, which I knew I'd buy on sight if I found one:

Graffiti yellow Fender Cyclone. I figured I had a shot since Kimura Kaela used to play one, so these would have been very popular here a few years back. I've wanted one for a long time.

Unfortunately, no dice. Though I did see various cheap copies of it. (And it's already a cheap guitar!)

Here are a few photos of the outside of some of the stores we went in:

Different stores focus on different things. All of them have way more variety than any American guitar store. Greco, Tokai, Fernandes, Ibanez, plus super-cheap brands that just make copies of famous guitars like Edwards and G.I.G. are given pretty much equal billing with the "big two". Gretsch and Rickenbacker are also a lot more prominent than in the US.

There is one particular store - and sorry, I don't remember which one - that has a large selection of Japanese Fender offset guitars. Mustangs (actually popular in every shop), Jazzmasters and Jaguars, including a discounted Jazzmaster in Seafoam Green with matching headstock that I came very close to buying (and I might go back!). It has a tiny, tiny chip in the finish on top of the headstock - the kind of thing anyone would do themselves the first day they got the thing home - and for that reason they had taken about $150 off the price!

The big problem with buying a guitar at one of these stores is obviously how to get it home. You can bring it, but that's dangerous (to the guitar) and inconvenient, or you can ship it, but that's expensive. If not for that, I'd probably have bought that SFG Jazzmaster. The Cyclone is cheaper, smaller and lighter and uncommon enough that I'd have just figured it out, but I already have a Jazzmaster so spending the money on one and lugging it around just because it's a different color than the one I have just seemed a little too much. But it was tempting!

One side note. One of the best used guitar stores we found was not actually a guitar store and it was not even in Tokyo - it was the Book Off "Super Bazaar" in a little town outside of Nagoya (more on that later). They had a bunch of old American guitars mixed in with newer Japanese ones, all in what amounts to a big thrift store.

I also almost bought this 1978 Mustang:

And this was a little funny - some of the tags attached to some of the guitars were labeled like this:

According to the text in the top right, this guitar, along with a bunch of others they sell, is apparently "junk".

Shibuya: Japan 3/2012 Day 2

2012-03-26T10:39:00.000-04:00

Just a quick one here - this is Shibuya at about 10PM on a Sunday night, if you can believe it:

Obviously the word "Sunday" is kind of meaningless in Japan. Sunday is just another weekend day.

Shibuya was not really on our itinerary this trip (I've been there before, several times), but I needed to buy a couple CD's as soon as I got to Japan, so I headed straight for that Tsutaya on the bottom right of that photo there. For these (among other things that they didn't have):

Two Scandal CD's to go with my now in-hand Scandal tickets for Wednesday night! I'm actually keeping these tickets in our hotel safe - they're quite valuable.

If you've never bought one, Japanese CD's are no joke. They're a major purchase. I usually try to buy the ones that come with a DVD (most Japanese CD's come either with or without one), and those run ¥3,500, or about $40. Even the non-DVD versions are ¥3,059, or about $35. But I've still got a few more music purchases to make before we leave...

(Hey, we save our money all year for this one week-long trip, so I don't feel too guilty about it.)

Coming up: guitar shopping in Ochanomizu, Haneda Airport (no joke, we went there just for the hell of it), Yokohama Chinatown, the Nagoya SCMAGLEV & Railway Park, and more!

Kobe Beef! Japan 3/2012 Day 1

2012-03-25T18:51:00.000-04:00

Last night I arrived in Japan. But we didn't waste any time - we went out to eat. We decided we wanted to try real Kobe beef - as in actual Wagyu beef from Kobe, and raised to Kobe standards - so we made a reservation at this place called 511 Kobe Beef Kaiseki. It's on one of those tiny little side streets in Akasaka, in the basement of a building, and can be hard to find unless you're looking for it. You're not going to stumble into it, which is probably just as well because while not snooty at all, it's definitely not the sort of place that really relies on walk-in traffic.

They have three basic choices on the menu. All are multi-course meals - two are just sort of different interpretations of Kobe beef, while if I remember right, I think the third is kind of an alternative option without it. My wife got the first option, which is a 9(!) course meal that has Kobe beef in every single dish.

...including sushi!

Just to be different, I went with the Kobe steak dinner, a 5 course meal with a larger steak as the main dish. Both options will run you 130,000 yen - no, this place is not cheap, but then Kobe beef is not cheap. Nowhere that serves the real stuff is going to charge much less than that.

I've had the fake stuff in America before (what's sold as "Kobe beef" in the US really isn't) and there is a definite difference. The real stuff is more tender, and like with all Japanese beef, it just tastes "beefier". That's got to have something to do with the way the cows are fed, because it's true of all grades and breeds I've had in Japan. The difference between Kobe beef and other Japanese beef is the tenderness and richness. It's the same with American Kobe-style beef, but American beef in general just doesn't have as much taste. People I know who have had Kobe beef in America describe it as very rich but not very meaty, which is not true of real Kobe beef.

Kobe beef doesn't have to be cooked to look like a delicate flower. This is a steak, grilled perfectly. Nice and pink on the inside.

The restaurant itself was beautiful, modern and elegant, and every course was great - except, maybe, the dessert choices. There were only three, none of them all that appealing to me. This restaurant also adds on a 5% service charge, which is very unusual in Japan (generally, Japan is not a tipping country), but then the service was really amazing, and beyond what you'd expect in most Japanese restaurants. Every course in my wife's 9 course meal came with a detailed explanation of the dish, for example. When I got up to go to the bathroom, I was led there by no fewer than three people. When we left the restaurant, everybody in the place lined up to say goodbye.

We also were given a surprise anniversary cake! This made the dessert choices not such a hard pill to swallow in the end. Truthfully, we sort of expected it because they asked us over the phone if there was any special occasion and we hadn't gone out on our actual anniversary (which was a few weeks ago) so we decided this was our anniversary dinner. While we were there, we saw another couple getting a cake too. So we kind of knew it was coming at that point. But it was still nice.

I highly recommend this place, if you can find it.

Lots more to tell you about in the coming days! I'm already a day behind in my trip report posts, and I've got a bunch planned.

Japan spring 2012 - the plan so far

2012-03-15T01:27:00.000-04:00

This Japan trip is shaping up to be one of the better ones we've had recently - and really they've all been good, so that's saying something. We don't spend much money on many things, but if there's one thing my wife and I know how to do, it's travel well. We should write a book! But the last couple trips I feel like we've been overconfident, relying too much on our local knowledge and winging it a little too often. I'm not the kind of person who likes to have everything planned out in my life, but on the other hand a) planning for a trip is actually half the fun, and b) it does actually waste a lot of time having to constantly figure out where you're heading the next day while you're there. Last time, we spent a little too much time in our hotel Googling for things to do.

So this time we've got a ton of stuff planned already, and I'm sure we'll come up with more stuff before we leave. Here I am planning our trip:

(Joke, btw. Try to keep up.)

Cities: Tokyo and Hiroshima

Flight(s): JAL (ANA was too expensive this time around)

Hotels:

Tokyo - Grand Arc Hanzomon

This is the same hotel we stayed at last year, though this time, we got a 400 square foot "deluxe" twin (last year was a regular twin):

This hotel is the best deal in Tokyo right now, I think. Great, big rooms, amazing view, basically perfect location, and both times we've stayed they've had great prices too. We put a lot of effort into finding our hotels and we've never been disappointed, but this one's our favorite so far. I still lament the Grand Prince Akasaka sometimes, but alas, it's now sleeping with the fishes. Or six feet under. Or whatever metaphor fits a rotting husk of a former hotel.

Hiroshima - Sheraton

Our first visit together to Hiroshima (my wife's been previously). I obviously wanted to go for the history, and my wife also wanted me to go for the history, which I can understand. I'm sure we'll be visiting the Arizona memorial when we go to Hawaii too (I've also been there previously). Anyway, the Sheraton's one of the newest hotels in Hiroshima, has some of the biggest rooms (this one's 377 square feet), some of the best views and we also managed to find it for an almost comically low rate. I mean you can't stay at some Super 8 motels for the price we paid for this room.

I wrote a whole post a while back about finding hotels in Japan, but really all you need these days is Kayak. And be sure to really look at the pictures there; pay attention both to what they're showing and not showing. You won't find lower rates or a bigger selection, since it aggregates everything. One tip: start looking at midnight. I swear, this really is when the cancellations get put into the system, and they try to refill those rooms as quickly as possible. If you can be the first, you can score one of those cancellation rooms at a ridiculous price. I'm convinced that's how we got both of these rooms this time. (I feel like I'm giving away some trade secret here, which I'm gonna regret next time we book.)

Stuff we've got planned so far:

Kobe beef restaurant (no, "Kobe style" or "California Kobe" is not the same!)
Guitar shopping in Ochanomizu (will I buy something?? Hmmmm....)
Uhh... model train shopping in Akihabara
Err... maid cafe in Akihabara (we want to try a famous one this time)
Hooters (not my idea!)
AKB48 theater show(??)
Haneda Airport visit (you know, for the food, obviously)
SCANDAL at Budokan(!!)
Hiroshima Castle
Hiroshima Peace Park & Museum
Possibly a stop on the way back in Kyoto to visit Kiyomizu or another temple

We're also doing some "business stuff" that we want to stay secret but is really going to be a lot of fun, and I know we are both looking forward to it. (It's similar to other business stuff we've done recently.) Hey, it's also what makes this trip a tax writeoff...

That's not a complete list - just stuff we either know we're doing or plan on trying to do. The AKB48 show almost definitely will not happen but we're really actually hoping it does - we requested tickets and now have to wait to see if we win the lottery (literally). Apparently tickets are very hard to come by these days! At least we actually have our Scandal tickets, which we didn't know how lucky we were to get.

My wife wants to visit Haneda airport because she's heard there are a lot of good restaurants there - go figure. I don't mind - I love airports as long as I'm not flying. I can watch planes take off and land all day long, though, because I am a nerd.

We did get a Japan Rail Pass this time, so I'm hoping we're not too worn out to hop off and back on the train at Kyoto and do a little sightseeing there. We had originally planned to spend some real time there again - we love the city (who doesn't??) - but it's spring break in Japan and probably elsewhere in the region and the hotels are all booked up. All that's left are $300+ rooms.

This is our first time to ever get a Japan Rail Pass, which I usually don't really think is worth it (it's certainly not automatically worth it, as some sites say it is; it depends on where you're planning to go and how you're planning to get there to begin with). I'll probably write a post about our experiences with it either during or after the trip. We did get the Green Car version of the rail pass, which I've decided is the only way to travel in Japan. It's really not that much more expensive.

Oh, and if you're a follower of my blog (not that I have many), we did not get Twilight Express tickets yet again... :( But we've got a lot of things planned to make up for it.

FFXIII-2's bullshit ending, and other musings on the series

2012-02-21T14:58:00.000-05:00

I'm angry. Angry because I just put 40 hours into a video game and what did I get? I got a big "fuck you" from the game's developers. But let's rewind a bit.

Spoilers follow, obviously.

The era of the CGI cinematic didn't start with Final Fantasy VII, but it was the first game that really got it right. That game used the medium of the CD-ROM to tell an epic story along with its 60+ hours of gameplay, and it rewarded gamers both along the way and at the end with CG animated scenes. Here's its ending:

Crude animation by modern standards, but you can see how this is a fitting ending to a long and in-depth story. I still tear up a bit when I see Aeris in that last shot.

Square started to really perfect their animation skills with FFVIII, a game that was otherwise disappointing but did have a fantastic ending in both content and technique:

You can really see Square hitting their stride here. Still no voices, but they had learned to tell stories through visuals and music. It was like watching a great, modern silent movie. But as good as it looks and sounds, it's what's in that ending that makes it great. It wasn't all wine and roses, either - one of the characters dies, but you can see that her spirit lives on in her daughter. So it's bittersweet, but still satisfying.

And so the series went on like that for a while - I won't post all the endings but you get the idea. Great animation, beautifully told stories.

Even FFXIII still had a pretty good ending, despite being a basically crap game. I'll post that one because it leads directly into FFXIII-2, which is the problem here:

Not quite as emotional as the best FF endings, and a little derivative of FFVII, but not bad. Fang and Vanille save the world, Lightning's sister Serah wakes up from her crystal prison, and Lightning gives her blessing to Serah and Snow's wedding. And everyone lives happily ever after.

OR DO THEY? FFXIII-2: holy crap, what the fuck is this?

If you don't feel like sitting through 17 minutes, you can just fast forward to around the 12 minute mark below, where the real cinematic begins.

Saving the world? Failed. Restoring the timeline? Failed. Saving Lightning, who had disappeared? Failed. The game's main character Serah? Dead. And in the stupidest of ways - standing around fine, then suddenly falls down dead. What, did she have an aneurysm? (The game hinted this might happen but never really explains why.)

And remember that Serah's a newlywed, to a different guy? Yeah, no mention of him either. She even chooses to live 500 years in the future before she dies (with Noel), leaving Snow behind without a second thought! Their love was one of the main driving forces behind the plot of FFXIII, and it's as if none of that ever happened in FFXIII-2.

Oh, but it's "to be continued" - we all know audiences love that shit.

It's as if Square had a brainstorming session about all the ways they could piss people off. Then they put those things in the ending. And purposely omitted resolutions to anything. Not only do you fail at every single thing you set out to do in the game, you actually undo all the things you did in FFXIII.

This is what you should see if you lose the game. Not if you win.

I'm not saying all Final Fantasy games need to have a happy ending that ties up all the loose ends... wait, yes I am. Because we paid $60 for this, and we invested 40+ hours of our lives into it. It's not like a film, where you're a voyeur watching other people's lives for a couple of hours, so you can just appreciate it on a detached, artistic level. Playing a Final Fantasy game can easily take over your own life for a month or more, and during that time you become the character you're playing, on some level. You control them directly, living and acting out events with them; you're not merely a spectator. And there is an expectation that you will be rewarded at the end.

FF games have killed major characters in the past - so that's not really the problem. Aeris dies in FFVII, Tidus disappears at the end of FFX. But those deaths meant something. Aeris dies to enter the lifestream and save the planet (yes, the writers were big Star Wars fans). Tidus has to disappear for the story to even make sense. Serah's death is meaningless to the story, and completely undignified. Why did you kill my Serah, Square?

The dumbest part? You can keep playing as zombie Serah. I assume she's a zombie; she looks the same but she is clearly dead up there. But the game keeps going. And it's not like the world is just still open for you to tie up loose ends, I mean there are whole quests that you actually can't undertake until the story is over. With a dead main character. You are even rewarded with items and materials to level her up after the credits roll.

Supposedly, the "to be continued" refers not to another upcoming sequel, but to downloadable content that you need to pay extra for. You'll be able to download individual character episodes, one of which is Lightning's, which supposedly "completes the story". Yes, you have to pay extra for the real ending. Maybe. People aren't really sure yet if even that ending will tie everything up, because it's not out yet.

Sorry, Square Enix, this is not how it works. I pay for a game, I get the completed game for the money I pay you. And you give me a proper ending on the disc. If not, I do not buy your next game. Is that clear enough? That's the deal. Pissing off your customers is not how you sell products.

I'm actually going to pretend this ending never happened, and I'll keep playing the game until I'm really done with it, then I'll see what's going on with the downloadable content or a potential re-release of the game (a "game of the year" edition with all the downloadable content is probable). And I will buy one of those, this time, because I invested a lot of hours into this. But this is one of those "fool me once..." things. I'll be watching next time to see if Square repeats this in FFXV or FFXIII-3, and I won't make this same mistake twice. Square, you had better be careful with your signature series.

Japan trip 2012, and my first Japanese live concert

2012-02-14T16:39:00.001-05:00

Welp, after less than a year, my wife and I are heading back to Japan this March. That's one of the perks of owning a Japanese business! Though it does mean we spend a lot of time working when we're there nowadays - Japan is no longer a vacation for me, it's a business trip. I haven't had a real vacation in years. The work we do is fun, though, so I can't complain. And we still have a few hours each day and a few days each trip to ourselves.

We don't yet have a lot of plans because we're still hoping to do the Twilight Express thing that I wrote about last year (before somehow mistakenly deleting that post), but it's just notoriously difficult to get tickets on that train, especially for the one room we want (the suite in the end car). We're keeping most of our days open for now, though.

One thing I've already mentioned we are doing is heading to NIPPON BUDOKAN (the Budokan) to see SCANDAL, who just happened to schedule their biggest show ever during the week we planned to be there. We just got our tickets! I'm excited - this isn't the first time I've ever seen a Japanese band (I've seen Dreams Come True, Puffy, and Boom Boom Satellites, all in NYC), but it will be the first time seeing one in Japan. Japanese shows always seem totally nuts on the one hand and supremely organized on the other - kind of like Japan itself.

I'm thinking it's gonna be something like this:

This was shot at Animax Musix, a yearly music festival for bands that have sung anime theme songs, basically (yes, this is a thing that exists in Japan). I don't think they could have attracted that big a crowd on their own at that time, but they obviously can now because this Budokan show sold out within fifteen minutes of going on sale to the general public. So even though we have some pretty bad seats, I'm just happy to be going - it's not easy to get tickets to a Japanese show from overseas, and we had to enlist my wife's sister-in-law in Japan to help us. Who the hell knew Scandal were so popular?? I've been following them since they were basically still college students making demo tapes. Now they're this big professional mainstream rock band selling out the 15,000 seat Budokan in fifteen minutes.

This is where our seats are - 2nd level, on the side of the stage. We are on an aisle, at least (I was a little imprecise with my circle drawing).

The system for buying tickets in Japan is pretty complicated, although it actually makes more logical sense than our system, where the general public often can't get tickets to popular shows at all until they pass to the professional scalpers (aka "ticket brokers") who will jack the prices up to ridiculous amounts. I remember the good old days, when that was illegal.

For this show, basically you had to be in the fan club to have gotten decent seats - they got first dibs. Probably the whole floor section is just fan club. Then there were about three other "tiers" that got to buy tickets before we could (people who had previously bought certain things in stores and had a code, or whatever). We signed up for the pre-sell lottery, the final tier before the general public sale. That meant if were among the winners, we were guaranteed seats somewhere. And we did win a spot in the lottery, meaning we didn't have to ask someone to stand in line waiting for 7-11 to open on the day tickets went on sale to the public. But these are the seats we were assigned - probably the best available by the time we were able to buy them. At least we're not behind the stage! Most of the tickets we've seen for sale on Yahoo! Auctions since we bought ours are even worse.

If you're overseas and don't have a Japanese address you can use or know anyone in Japan, then really the only two ways to get tickets to shows there are a) using a shopping service to physically go buy them for you or b) using a shopping service to bid on an auction for tickets after they've already been put on sale. Neither method is really all that reliable and both will cost some money. Or you can just go to a ticket broker when you get to Japan, but I don't think they really have tickets to sold out shows (or if they do, they're probably extremely expensive just like here).

We're actually hoping to go to some more shows while we're there but neither of us can find anything else we're interested in. We're still looking, though. I would like to go to a smaller club show somewhere, if we can find something good...

Anyway, watch for my regular updates on the stuff we're doing while we're there... I admit that I'm losing my ability to see things there from a tourist's point of view (it is my 12th visit to Japan), but I'm sure I'll still find some interesting things to talk about! And no doubt you'll see my Scandal vs. Budokan show report, at least.

I'll close with Scandal's latest single release, as performed on some Japanese TV show recently:

The US needs more all-girl bands. I'm going to have to start listening to The Bangles again.

CIJ/MIJ Fender Jazzmaster tremolo upgrade

2012-02-06T23:57:00.001-05:00

Another in my surprisingly popular series of posts dedicated to the Japanese version of Fender's most famous "forgotten" electric guitar! How oddly specific.

One of the easiest upgrades that owners of Japanese (CIJ/MIJ) Fender Jazzmasters can make is the tremolo unit, aka the tailpiece. The tremolo in Japanese Jazzmasters is kind of a weak point in these mostly excellent guitars (another is the pickups), but luckily, it's really easy to just drop in an American one.

What you need:

* Fender USA Jazzmaster tremolo unit part #0054466000
* Fender USA Jazzmaster tremolo arm part #0054473000
* If you don't have any, you also need a Stratocaster tremolo arm tip (the Japanese one won't fit. See part #'s here, depending on color).

I found my trem unit and arm on Ebay; they can be hard to find. (Ironically, real vintage ones seem to be easier right now.) Many reputable stores that used to have them seem to be perpetually sold out these days (e.g. Angela.com). Be sure you're actually buying a genuine Fender USA unit; there are a lot of cheap imports out there, many of which are labeled as "for" American Vintage Jazzmasters. That's not the same as saying they are American Vintage Jazzmaster tremolos. You really need to be careful. The label should look something like this:

None of the cheap imports is an upgrade over Fender Japan's tremolos, which aren't that bad as it is; the only real upgrade is an American one. One clue you've found an American unit (though definitely not a foolproof one) is the price - a USA tremolo should be around $60 just for the unit, and $10-$15 more if it comes with the arm. The imports are almost always priced much less than that.

Onto the surgery! Here's a Japanese tremolo unit in place:

Remove all the strings and the tremolo arm (it will be tight, but just grab it at the bend and pull straight out) and unscrew the tremolo unit, making sure to only unscrew the screws along the outside edge:

Here's what it looks like ready to come out:

And it's out!

If you're lucky (like I was), it won't stick. If it sticks, just try to figure out where it's sticking and gently pry it up with your fingernail if you can. There's nothing holding it on but the finish at that point, so you just want to try to avoid chipping the polyurethane when you pull it out.

Here are the two units side by side - let's play spot the differences!

There's no size difference - they kind of lay at different angles so there's a perspective effect in that photo. But, there are some actual differences:

* The lock button is nickel-finished on the US unit, the Japanese is chrome
* The metal on the collet (the part that holds the arm) is thicker on the US unit
* The collet hole is round on the US unit, and oval on the Japanese
* Oddly, the Fender and patent number typefaces are slightly different

A more functional difference: the string spacing is correct on the US version, and incorrect on the Japanese.

The base plate is slightly thicker on the US version. Honestly, though, it's not a huge difference, and both units are pretty hefty. (It may even be slightly exaggerated here; it looks like I may have been holding the US unit closer to the camera without realizing it.)

Here's the underside:

US is on the left; Japanese on the right. Again, there are some differences, but they're not really that dramatic. The US one is slightly chunkier in general.

Here are the arms:

US on the bottom, Japanese on top. The US one has a smoother bend and a little less of a shiny chrome finish. Different arms do have different bends so I don't know if this is representative overall. I've seen some goofy looking US arms.

More importantly, the US arm is a little thinner and has screw threads for the tip. A Japanese arm won't fit in a US tremolo, and neither will a Japanese tip fit on a US arm. I had actually jammed a US tip onto my Japanese arm so I was able to just reuse that; it hadn't deformed it too much. (And I had "aged" it in tea myself, so I was happy about that!)

Reverse the process laid out for removal and... done! When you put in your arm, be sure to press it all the way in. Many people are afraid to do this and end up with floppy arms and a sloppy-feeling tremolo and wonder why. Kevin Shields famously used to leave his arms hanging out for a bit more height, but he actually used to have to tape them to the tremolo collet so they wouldn't fall out.

This is all really a five minute procedure - I spent way more time taking these photos for this blog post. Be sure to set up your tremolo after installing it! (The trem arm will probably be very close to the strings if it's really set up properly for the trem lock - I usually keep mine adjusted so the tip is a bit higher, even though it makes the lock useless.)

So, does it feel different, and is it worth it?

As a cheap upgrade, I think it's worth doing. Honestly, I think the Japanese tremolos are not bad, but the US ones are slightly better. Japanese tremolos do feel a little "loose", in that there's a little play in the system where you can press the bar down a half inch or so before it "catches", and if you're hard on it, it'll do so with an audible click. And it does this every single time. I'm not sure what causes that (probably the collet itself), but it doesn't seem to be present in the US version. Also, it's nice to have the correct string spacing, which means the strings aren't being pulled both vertically and horizontally against the bridge saddles. That can lead to broken strings - not a good thing. It also reduces sustain.

I don't actually believe there's anything wrong with the metal itself, or the spring in Japanese tremolos, as some do. My US tremolo doesn't feel any "stronger" than my Japanese did. But it does feel a bit smoother, and I have more confidence in my string longevity, and I do believe I am getting more sustain. Of course, it's hard to objectively measure any of that. But I believe it to be true.

My next upgrade: new shielding!