Tokyo, Day 1

I woke up early. Which makes sense since I was out by 9:00 the previous night. But I stayed in bed and read, and generally forced myself to do nothing until about 9:30AM. At which time I started to get dressed for the day.

Which was made no easier by the f#$%ing brain surgeons at Yahoo:

High 58, Low 41, Currently 66. Nice job, you retarded motherf#$%ers.

So I light off for the territories, or, in this case, Shibuya. Which oddly enough, is where that billboard of my Christmas present used to be.

It's not there now. I was kidding. But it was worth a laugh, I hope.

Never mind.

I had come on a pilgrimage. For my generation of guitarists, inspired by the DIY attitude of Eddie Van Halen, there was one company who would make you whatever guitar you wanted:

ESPFrom a small shop in Tokyo and a distributor in NYC, this company has become one of the world's biggest guitar builders. But you know what? The custom shop is right here.

This place is important.

Because from it you can see the sign..., the blue one... that says ESP.

Getting closer...

Almost there...

The guitar needs a little TLC...

Here it is... The doorway to heaven (even if it doesn't have pubic hair).

I wandered around in there for at least an hour. They let me go upstairs and look at the shop. The luthiers were working in it, but that just made it better. It was weird and utterly cool for me to visit this place, since so many guitars I have liked were born here, and I had read about it like some mythic lmad scienctist laboratory for 20 years. Many of these guitars I actually liked more than the people they were made for, but just to see it was still really impressive. Partially because it was such a modest operation. But you could see that these guys knew their stuff and had an incredibly high degree of craftsmanship. Hey, if I'm paying US$5,000 for a guitar, they better!

Divide the Yen by 90 to convert to US$

Later, I went back to Ochanomizu and looked at guitars again.

What, you thought I was kidding???

Around 3 or 4, I went back to my hotel room and took a nap. Like Hong Kong, horizontal space is expensive, but vertical is not. So a lot of guitar stores are 4 floors. With stairs. And I am not young, or thin, or speak Japanese. Which is a thumbnail sketch of the people who work here. I doubt the stairs have anything to do with age or linguistics, though.

It had been warm all day (like f#$%ing 66 degrees...), so I was surprised to wake up to significantly colder (and wetter) conditions. But I had a dinner date with some AnD people, and I wasn't going to miss it. I had no umbrella and my warmest jacket is also leather, so I made do. In other words, I froze my tropical-living @ss off.

I met with Mio and Toshiya Watanabe for dinner, and it was really nice. Toshiya doesn't speak English, but that doesn't stop him from trying. It was really a great sight to see him get out of the taxi in that outfit.

It could almost make me forgive Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation, but actually nothing can and I hope she rots in hell.

Did I just say that???

So we all went to dinner and had a great time. I realized that people with back and knee problems have it rough sitting on wooden floors, but so what? I got a chance to eat the best sushi I've ever tasted and spend time with incredibly nice people. Here are some of the few pictures I got; Mio will no doubt have more.

John, Toshiya, and Taiga.

All of us; the ethnicities make it look lke a sushi sandwich.

He gave me that fan, and other gifts, and I am exceedingly grateful.

I lost that fan to John over Paper, Scissors, Rock. It has Toshiya's picture painted on it. Custom guitar picks are cool, but when you have signature fans, you're really something!

The luckiest kid in the world, for a lot of reasons.

Okay, it's 2:00 AM and I have overachieved blog-wise. Tomorrow... guitar shopping!!!

I hope the weather is a bit more... consistent

"Take this umbrella in case it's raining, You have your rubbers, don't you?"