NGD! Silverburst Thunderbird

I bought a bass. I actually started out a bassist and had a band (as a bassist) in high school. We were pretty popular... inside the high school. But I eventually switched to vocals and I couldn't sing and play at the same time so we got another bassist. And then the band broke up, and I switched to playing guitar.

I bought a bass because I've started doing some recording at home for fun (and profit?) and I just needed something cheap that didn't sound like a guitar pretending to be a bass. This is an Epiphone Thunderbird Bass IV limited edition in silverburst, with chrome hardware. They only made these for a few years but as soon as I stumbled across a picture online, I knew I had to have one. I mean, considering I was in the market for a cheap bass - I'd still rather have either a MIA Fender or Gibson. But this is definitely the coolest looking of all the cheap basses on the market.

It seems to be built pretty well and it sounds good, at least through my Yamaha THR10. It is still a Chinese-made Epiphone and it's not perfect... but then my $1,400 MIA Jazzmaster isn't perfect either, so there's that. The neck's a bolt-on, unlike a proper Gibson, and it's slightly out of alignment. I can fix that easily, but it'll happen again because the neck pocket is cut looser than any Fender I have (or my Squier Strat). I guess Fender's just better at bolt-on necks. On the backside, there are a couple of what may be cracks underneath the finish, or it may just be weird pieces of mahogany where the grain is sticking out a little.

The holes in either the pickguard or the body under it are also a little out of alignment, such that the screws are all angled in and the pickguard still isn't seated right against the middle plank. I can fix that too, but I need to figure out whether it's the body or the pickguard that's mis-drilled. Anyway it's just cosmetic and only the kind of thing an obsessive compulsive guy like me would notice.

My bass is also missing the truss rod cover, and I have a feeling it's because the previous owner was trying to pass it off as a Gibson, which I've seen a few people do with these. I can tell Guitar Center removed whatever was there very recently - there was still sawdust around the screw holes when it arrived. Anyway I've already ordered an Epiphone cover - if you've got an Epiphone, don't hide it like a cheeseball with a Gibson cover! You're not fooling anyone, dude. The cover was $20, which will bring the grand total for this thing to $220. Still a great deal.

The nice thing about buying used is that sometimes you'll get a guitar that's already set up nicely, and that's the case with this bass. It actually plays really well. The action's low-ish, and I can tell that both the bridge and pickup heights have been adjusted by looking at the screw heads. Overall it's in really nice shape - it's scratched up just enough that I can tell it was well played, but cared for.

Liking it a lot so far. It's badass. And it makes my other guitars look like ukuleles. It's huge, which suits me fine. I remember now why I started on bass to begin with. I hope this doesn't turn into another expensive hobby!

Ra-Haku - Shin-Yokohama Raumen Museum! - Japan 11/2013

A lot of this trip was spent catching up on things we've never had time for before; the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum (or "Raumen Museum" as it says on their bags) was one of those. You'd have to think it'd be a unique experience, plus good food is at least implied. My wife always thought it was super small and not worth going to, though, so we always pushed it way down on the priority list. Until now...

This is a scene from the truly unfortunate movie "Map of the Sounds of Tokyo", several scenes of which are inexplicably set inside the Ramen Museum even though none of the characters live or work anywhere near it. We'd just watched this movie, so despite it being depressingly bad, the museum was fresh in our minds and we decided to finally make the trek to Yokohama.

This sign is stupidly the only photo I took of the exterior. It's not that impressive anyway; it kind of looks like the entrance to a movie theater (and it's a little hard to find even with a GPS-enabled smartphone), although as is true everywhere in Japan, there are far more women in uniform than you'd expect standing around waiting to usher you inside.

A one-day ticket costs ¥300. Interestingly, I think a 3 month ticket was only something like ¥600 - my wife and I were saying it actually seemed like a decent deal if you worked around there and just wanted to go for lunch once in a while. You do still need to pay for the ramen itself whatever type of ticket you buy, but it's cheap and good and there are a lot of choices.

Here's the ticket and brochure - you can get them in several languages. There's some basic info about ramen and a rundown of the different shops in the museum there. We didn't really look at it, though - we just looked at the pictures on the wall as soon as you walk in to decide where to eat.

The place is small but we were honestly quite impressed. I somehow hadn't gotten this from other pictures I've seen but it's modeled to look like a typical Japanese city of 1958. I'd previously thought it was just really run down! They picked that year because it was when instant ramen was invented. Kind of an odd thing to celebrate; sort of like a "Spaghetti Museum" picking a date to celebrate the opening of the first Olive Garden.

There's a huge amount of attention to detail - this is a little "town" that runs around the side of the building, and it feels totally authentic. There are even a few real shops in here that you can go into - it's not just decoration. Since it runs all the way around the building, it actually feels like a pretty long walk, and makes the whole place feel bigger.

Period signs and weathering. They've even got the clothes on the clothesline. (A common sight still today, but you just wouldn't necessarily expect that level of extra detail at a ramen museum.)

The place we picked to eat at is called Komurasaki. They specialize in tonkotsu ramen from Kyushu. Tonkotsu is probably my favorite style, although I like shoyu ramen too and I can eat miso ramen if it's good.

To order your ramen, you first need to pick what you want from a period-style vending machine and get a ticket. This system is common in Japan; the idea is you don't spend 20 minutes with your butt taking up a seat while you stare at a menu inside the restaurant. Even at the ramen museum, you're meant to be in and out when you actually eat.

Unfortunately this system does ensure that you can (and probably will) get stuck behind a bunch of idiots like anywhere else. We seemed to have a junior high school class trip from China in front of us at this machine, so we were waiting for them to make their choices and buy their tickets for about 15 minutes.

This was our ramen and gyoza. I think I just got the regular with extra meat. It was incredibly good, as you'd expect from a place that's been in business since 1954. I wouldn't say it was better than the best I'd ever had, but it came pretty close. The meat did melt in my mouth; the broth was really well balanced; the noodles were tender and fresh.

BIRU!! This place makes their own. It was interesting, in a microbrew sort of way. It tasted vaguely Belgian, which I wasn't really expecting. It was good, though.

The place bills itself as both a museum and "amusement park". We weren't sure what that meant, but as we were walking around after eating, we saw this guy setting up... for what we didn't know at the time. We decided to see what he was planning. Have you ever seen a contact juggler? I've seen them in YouTube videos, but never one in person - it is quite mesmerizing even if you know exactly how they're doing it. This is the guy we saw:

I believe he's somewhat older and better now than in that video (he looks about 12 there), but that's the only video he seems to have up of himself. He also tried regular juggling with seven balls (you try it - I've never seen anyone do it successfully before) and that took him three tries to get right, but he finally did. But his contact juggling was perfect and we were both hypnotized. We gave him ¥500 at the end.

On our way out we stopped at the museum shop (which includes a giant slot car track for some reason). I didn't get pics of the shop but this is one of the things we bought there, as a gift for SCANDAL at their concert the next day. (I also bought some ramen for my nieces back in the US.) This is a ramen set; four packages of ramen from the places in the museum. One of them is Komurasaki, the place we ate at.

The neat thing about the ramen they sell there is that it's fresh. I went a little nuts on Minca in NYC here a few years ago because they seemed proud of using dried noodles, and I went even more ballistic on the NY Times for dismissively saying noodles were "the easy part" of ramen. You can totally taste and feel the difference between fresh and dried ramen noodles. It's like saying dried spaghetti is just as good as fresh, because the only part of a spaghetti dinner that matters is the sauce. No!

Definitely recommend this place. It's pretty tiny but cheap and jam packed full of eye candy - no corner of it hasn't been touched by someone trying (and succeeding) to make it look authentically old, like something out of an original Godzilla movie. And the ramen is good!

Cup no Fuchiko-san - Miss Cup Edge - Japan 11/2013

This was funny.

One of Japan's big memes right now is "Cup no Fuchikosan", these little capsule toy girls meant to sit on the edge of your cup. The name itself is a play on words - "fuchi" means "edge". They come in all different poses. My wife and I spent our entire dinner at Hooters Ginza playing with them. We got a lot of attention from the waitresses.

Apparently this has been going on for months now, but it was just on TV when we were there so there was another big run on these toys. We searched around all over for them and finally found them in a Tokyu Hands, which had a big display.

People have gotten really creative with these and now there are photo books and all manner of merchandise related to them. Amazon Japan has 11 pages worth of results for "Cup no Fuchikosan"!

We bought them in their original form, as capsule toys. Opposite that display above was a bank of capsule machines in the middle of the floor.

So cute!

Daikanransha - Giant Sky Wheel - Odaiba - Japan 11/2013

This is Daikanransha, at one time the tallest ferris wheel in the world. It's still pretty goddang tall, but since 2000 a bunch of other bigger wheels have been built, and it's now in lowly 12th place.

But like SkyTree, it's a landmark that you can see from practically all over Tokyo (which means the reverse is also true), especially at night when it's lit up like a Christmas tree. I've always wanted to ride it. I've got pics and video of it going back to the early 00's, but somehow just never made it there before now.

Daikanransha's in Odaiba, which I've actually been to several times before - but mostly to go to Sega Joypolis and Yo! Tekoya. Odaiba is a really strange area - home to some wild architecture, headquarters to media like Fuji TV, and otherwise mostly populated by things to amuse yourself with. It's like a giant arcade with office buildings.

Here's Zepp Tokyo, a major nightclub/live house venue that a bunch of my favorite Japanese bands have played at. I never even realized it was here - it is literally right next to Daikanransha.

Because of what there is in Odaiba, and also what there isn't much of (housing), the island is always dead if you go on a weekday. There are people there, but they're mostly in the office buildings working. The malls, parks and amusement areas are always completely deserted. (It is probably very different on nights and weekends.)

I've always kind of wanted to stay in Odaiba for all those reasons - there's a ton of fun stuff to do, and it's just wide open most of the time - no crowds, no waiting. There are a few hotels, but you do have to deal with the fact that it's kind of a trek to get to the main part of the city. It's like staying in Staten Island if you go to New York (if Staten Island had a lot more going on).

There are two options - you can ride the standard color gondola or the "all clear" version that lets you see through the floor and ceiling. In keeping with our policy of always taking the special option, we rode the clear gondola.

Here's our clear gondola on the way... you've gotta be ready to run on as soon as they call you.

Here's the ground from the bottom and floor of our gondola. I was a little freaked out through a lot of the ride, although my wife was fine. None of the clear gondola looks structural; it all looks like it's going to fall apart. The plexiglass was very thin, and the frame seriously just looked decorative. As we went up, it really did feel like just being out in the open air.

Part of the view on the way up. If you look close, you can see Tokyo Tower on the left and SkyTree on the right. (SkyTree is a lot further away, which is why they look the same height.) This is looking towards "downtown" Tokyo, if there is such a thing. On the opposite side is mostly water.

There was some sort of drifting thing going on in the distance. Sorry about the music - the only natural sound during this video was my wife talking. (This music makes me laugh anyway.)

Going up over the top! It actually was really windy that day and we were bobbing around all over the place. I could also feel the whole wheel swaying, which was a little disconcerting. I kept telling myself this thing hasn't blown over in 14 years, it's probably not going to happen now.

I snapped a few good shots of the wheel on the way out.

Couldn't help but stop at this arcade on the way out! This place was massive and nearly completely empty. We played some mini-bowling, and of course I had to sit down for some Wangan Midnight 4, one of my favorite racing game series ever.

Oh, and of course... !

We made the trek over to Yo! Tekoya again - it's a crime to go to Odaiba and miss it.