ALPHABET CITY

Japan's "dark side", and other stuff not worth writing about

2013-06-13T14:05:00.000-04:00

Every once in a while, someone tries to call me out in a comment or email as being somehow naive or simple-minded in my posts about Japan. Usually these people are obviously recent young JET program participants or NOVA language school refugees. They think their year or two living with a host family in rural Japan has given them particular insight into the country, and they're convinced that what I lack is knowledge of THE DARK SIDE.

The Japanese seem pretty comfortable with it.

That is, the supposed hidden underbelly of the country's psyche. Articles like this one or this one reinforce their position - it's become fashionable among younger westerners to focus on Japan's dark side. I actually believe it's a form of delayed culture shock mixed with a lack of self-awareness. Certainly I am keenly interested in Japan's little annoyances. But let me be clear about this. It's not that I'm unaware of or denying Japan's dark side. But I don't write about it because it is boring. It's boring to the Japanese too.

It's boring in the same adolescent way that Marilyn Manson is boring. It's like the first time you discover angst. It's a massive revelation when you're 17, but it's just sort of "there" for everyone else.

Every country in the world has a "dark side". Crime, malaise, bullying, the drudgery of routine, garbage, dirt, debt, social pressures, corruption, prostitution, inequality, racism, sexism... none of these things are unique to Japan or anywhere else; it's just a question of degree. Japan has them less than most countries. I just assume that they're always there; it would be worth writing about only if they were not. (For example, I have written about Japan's low crime rate, which is statistically true.)

They're also just topics with no real insight possible by any individual blogger, and certainly not an American one (pot/kettle/black). Am I going to solve Japan's suicide problem? On the other hand, I have the #2 Google result for Japanese crepes! That's the kind of topic worth writing about.

When I'm in Japan, I like to look for things that are unique to it. My wife, who lived in Japan for the first 28 years of her life, says she's done more new things there in the time we've been together than she ever did when she lived there by herself. And when I write about Japan, I intentionally do it for people who might not be as familiar with the country as I am. This is a particular problem I've found with many Japanophiles (especially if they cross over a bit into weeaboo territory) - they treat Japan as if it's their own little club that nobody else is allowed into, and if you don't already know the secret handshake, then keep out.

I purposely don't write that way, using a lot of random Japanese words and acting like a lunch at Coco's Family Restaurant is some special Japanese activity with nuances that westerners couldn't hope to grasp. I want more people to go and experience Japan as I have over the past 13 years. And I want people to see the country as I still do, without being poisoned by some prematurely jaded kid who thinks they've stumbled upon a big secret about the country that only someone like Tomithy Rempers might understand. (Rempers is a parody of Tim Rogers, a particularly Japan-obsessed video game writer who has now hopped on the dark side bandwagon, but you don't really need to know that to find the humor in that link.)

I was lucky enough to visit Japan for the first time in the year 2000. It was for my job, covering Nintendo Spaceworld for a web site I worked at, and I went alone. I didn't have this blog back then and so never wrote about that trip (maybe just snippets here and there), but it was a life-changing experience. How's this for a cool and apropos photo?

I went back almost immediately to cover the Tokyo Game Show that same year. Since then, I've spent a lot of time in Japan both personally and for work and done many, many things that I have never posted here, for one reason or another. Mostly it's family stuff - that's another thing people seem to assume I have no experience with. (I'm often told that I need to experience rural Japan to get the "real" experience, as if Ibaraki prefecture isn't rural enough. Anyway, 78.7% of Japanese people live in cities, and I'm pretty sure the urban experience is just as "real" for them. This is the same as the Sarah Palin "real America" argument here, and it's just as bullshit.)

Rural Japan. This was just after a typhoon, which is why I took this seemingly random photo of the rice paddy across the road from my in-laws' house.

I also do not, as a rule, post photos of family or friends here, because they do still value privacy. So you don't see all the times spent out just drinking in bars with friends we have there, or hanging around the house like an average family does, or going to Coco's Family Restaurant, or really any social situations at all. That may make my blog feel a little less personal than I'd actually like, and it may make my experiences seem more limited than they actually are, but it's the way the people we know there want it. And honestly, these are just normal everyday things, so they don't feel blogworthy at the time. Hanging around with family and friends in Japan is just not a lot different than doing the same in America.

This extends to my business too. Some of my actual friends reading this may know that I run a Japan-based store, and have for four years now. I deal with Japanese suppliers on a daily basis, as well as fashion models and other public figures there, some of which we've become pretty tight with. But I rarely post anything about my personal dealings with them anywhere - not here, and not even on my store blog (this or this is about the closest I get).

The point being, if you think you're going to educate anybody here about what Japan is "really like", you're in the wrong place. You're free to start your own blog where you can try to impress everyone with your knowledge of how Japan is actually the exact opposite of the way everyone thinks it is, but you're not teaching me anything, nor any of my readers. Japan is whatever you want it to be.

In conclusion:

Really, Guitar Center?

2013-06-05T22:58:00.001-04:00

Today was my birthday. My wife, who is amazing, bought me a Yamaha THR10 tabletop guitar amp from Guitar Center's web site. She bought it new, as you can see on the receipt - not used, and not scratch 'n' dent:

This unboxing post shows how it's supposed to look when you get it. I'm not gonna steal anybody's photos, so just click the link. The amp is nicely wrapped and packed in foam, everything is in a separate little baggie, and it comes with Cubase AI software. And obviously the manufacturer box.

Well, here's my unboxing:

Already doesn't look quite right, does it?

No manufacturer box, no wrapping for the amp or power cords, and no software.

So, ok, you're thinking "they just sent a used one by mistake. Shit happens in a big warehouse." And I'd accept that and just exchange it with a little grumbling over the inconvenience, but then what's up with this?

Ok, now they've just gone and pissed me off. Because they're clearly claiming this is a new item, which it just as clearly is not. This is a used amp, which they stuck this little card in with in the hopes that I wouldn't return it and they can keep their extra profit. And seriously, even if it was new and the manufacturer box was in that bad of shape, how is it acceptable to just take the product out and then repackage it? What if I want to resell it later? What if the product is internally damaged just as the original box is? And where is the software and why are all the individual parts out of their original baggies? Were those damaged too? When I used to sell electronics, we'd send stuff like that back to the manufacturer, not sell it at regular price. Even if I believed their explanation, it's still ridiculous.

This was a birthday gift, Guitar Center. Not everybody who orders from you is ordering for themselves. You made my wife feel really bad and you tried to rip us off, and that makes me mad.

Also, read that last sentence on the card and then check this out:

Their packaging worked really well to protect from damage, huh? It's a little hard to see there but the metal is actually cracked, not just the black plastic.

The only real packing they used at all was a small crumpled up piece of paper near the handle. You see those dents in the box? That's from the amp just being slammed straight down face first against the cardboard. You see how perfectly those dents line up with the front of the amp:

Well, I'm exchanging it tomorrow and I have little doubt they'll just give me another one - and one that's actually new this time, without claiming otherwise. Still, people should watch out for stuff like this. Don't let them pull a fast one on you.

UPDATE: Exchanged.

New one in a real box. This one's undamaged, came with everything wrapped and packed properly, and included the software. The guy at the store agreed it looked like they sent me a used one, but I didn't show him the card that claimed otherwise. He had nothing to do with that and I just wanted a new one, so I didn't think it was worth saying anything.

I'll post some thoughts on this thing soon!

Fender Jazzmaster Pickup Covers - the details of the Jazzmaster look

2013-05-28T18:40:00.000-04:00

Today I want to talk about a subject near and dear to every Jazzmaster owner's heart: pickup covers! This will hopefully be the definitive post on the subject, and more info than anyone could ever need.

One of the easiest and cheapest ways to change the appearance of any Fender guitar is by replacing the plastic bits. On the Jazzmaster, many of these parts are standard Fender, shared between many guitars, and consequently available in various colors.

But the pickup covers are unique, and showing off those massive single coils is a huge part of the Jazzmaster look. And Fender has screwed us all there.

Fender makes plastic for their other guitars in four official colors:

White - stark, bright and "new" looking
Parchment - slightly aged, reddish off-white
Aged White - very yellow beige
Black - like your soul

THE PROBLEM
Fender USA (and Mexico) currently make Jazzmaster pickup covers in one color only: Aged White. Fender Japan also makes their covers in one color only: White. Buy a 1962 or 1965 American Vintage Reissue and you'll get Aged White; buy a Fender Japan Jazzmaster and you'll get bright White. Now, this presents a couple problems if you want a more realistic vintage look:

Fender Japan pickups sometimes (often?) have slightly different pole spacing than US ones. They are not necessarily compatible with US covers and vice versa.
Neither country's Fender company makes a color that really looks "right".

SOME BACKGROUND
All Fender guitars through the 1960's came with white plastic parts - not off-white, not aged white. If you bought a new guitar in 1962, it would have come with pickup covers, knobs and tips that were white. The linked photo is a real 1965 - not a reissue - that was bought and then kept in a case all these years. That's your reference for how these guitars really looked. Here's another view. So why does Fender USA only make aged white covers these days? Simple: it's factory relicing. And while a slight off-white might be more pleasing than stark bright white, "aged white" is just taking it too far.

Aged white actually looks okay on some color schemes - for example it's not horrible on the stock black with tort pickguard:

But it looks cartoonish on any sort of guitar with a mint pickguard:

It's context - it's like that optical illusion about which box is brighter.

I have seen plenty of vintage Jazzmasters and not many of them have pickup covers that yellow. A small percentage come close, and the environment the guitar has been in plays a role, but most look like this 1965 Jazzmaster, or this one that looks a little older. 9 times out of 10, the plastic parts are lighter than any mint pickguard, more off-white than anything.

In fact, my current knobs are real 1960's witch hats, made out of presumably the same ABS plastic as Fender's original pickup covers. This photo pretty closely approximates their true color:

It's not even close to "aged white". By the way, more on those particular pickup covers below.

So let's say you're in one of these situations:

Just bought a new JM, want it to look either a little less fake relic'd (USA) or a little less like a "closet classic" (Japan)
Just replaced your pickups and your current covers don't quite fit right, as in the below photo (where I've already tried scratching out some of the plastic to let the pole pieces through)

THE SOLUTIONS

Your aftermarket options are basically these:

1) Mojotone - bright white, black or "cream" (same as aged white) covers to fit USA pole spacing. Their black is a little greyish.

2) Allparts - bright white or black covers to fit Japan or USA pole spacing (seems random). Their black is really black.

Note that Fender has historically used ABS plastic, while Allparts and Fender Japan seem to use Nylon. I'm not sure what Mojotone uses, but see my comments on the tea trick below. Also note that Allparts black pickup covers are "blacker" than Mojotone's - I've tried both and compared them side by side. Allparts is a really inky piano black, but flip a coin on them actually fitting.

For what it's worth, the pickup covers in the two photos above are Allparts, which I bought in a futile attempt to try to fix my pole spacing with the Japanese covers. Allparts parts for JM are really frustrating, in my experience - all of their stuff looks and feels like OEM stuff, very solid, but it's just impossible to predict if it's going to fit right. My white covers were exactly the same as my Japanese ones - they were the same cover, no doubt made in the same factory. Consequently, they did not fit my new USA-spaced pickups. However, I also have black Allparts pickup covers and they fit my US Jazzmaster perfectly and look great:

Because I ended up with two sets of Japanese white covers, I enlarged my Allparts holes to fit and then sanded all the gloss finish off so they'd age quicker - which worked too well. After only a few years, my covers were going brown, and very unevenly. It was unsightly and with my AVRI all shiny now, I wanted the polished, glossy look back for my CIJ.

Here are the Mojotone white covers on the same red CIJ Jazzmaster as above (with the same pickups):

Pretty perfect fit. With USA pickups (including on AVRI guitars), I recommend these if you want to get rid of the yellow AVRI covers - there is no better option. The only thing I don't really like is that they seem a little thicker than my other covers - they're a very tight fit in the pickguard, and the pole pieces (which are already a little low on the Antiquity II's) are almost submerged. But this is not unusual to see on a real vintage Jazzmaster.

Here are the Mojotone vs. Fender covers:

THE TEA TRICK
But can you soften that stark white look any to approximate the off-white look of real vintage parts? Well, you can try the tea trick:

This is a well-known shortcut to aging white Fender plastic. Simply make some strong black tea (it works better than coffee), cool it down until it's lukewarm, then stick your plastic parts in it for a few hours to a few days. That's how I warmed up the look of my tremolo tip above (compare its color to the pickup covers, and to the actually-50-year-old knobs). You're looking for a real molecular color change, not just something you can wipe off. It's easy to be fooled when you first take plastic out of the tea - make sure you rinse and wipe your parts to see the true color. If they haven't changed enough, put them back. I've done this for up to three days with other parts - don't worry, they're not going to drown.

The problem is all the modern white pickup covers I've ever seen - Allparts, Fender Japan and Mojotone - are somehow resistant to the tea trick in a way that Fender's USA-made white parts are not. This makes me think the Mojotones are made of Nylon too. I only noticed a slight change after nearly a day steeping in tea. But it's still worth doing to take the edge off. It's just gonna take time in the sun after that...

Until Fender USA decides to make white Jazzmaster pickup covers, this is probably the best we can do to approximate a true vintage look.

FINAL RECOMMENDATIONS:
For USA pickups (either factory or replacement): Mojotone white, Allparts black, Fender USA aged white (if you like that look)

For Japan pickups (factory pickups): there's no reliable replacement pickup option. Allparts white fit mine, but they're the same as the stock Japanese covers. Some years of Fender Japan pickups do seem to have the USA spacing, so all you can do is try something for USA spacing and see if it fits.

The East Village NYC, circa 1992

2013-05-28T02:01:00.001-04:00

Believe it or not, there is a better reason for this blog being named Alphabet City than just a stretch at the figurative, or a play on words. I used to actually live in the East Village, and afterwards I still went to school and then worked in both the East Village and Alphabet City. But this blog is nearly ten years old, if you can believe it, and I've since moved on with my life. And I've just never renamed it.

I've had this long-term scanning project going on that I'll probably never finish on my own. These are photos I first scanned 5 or 6 years ago now and just found again tonight, but that I actually took when I lived on 1st Avenue in 1992, just after the Tompkins Square Park Riot and just before the Squatter Riots. It's hard to find photos of the area at that time so I thought somebody might enjoy these. The neighborhood back then was a lot different than the New Jersey bar-hopping crowd is used to these days...

There was a lot more creative graffiti at that time - it wasn't just the stupid tagging that exists now. The neighborhood was so ugly in parts that a lot of landlords actually contracted stuff like this, or at least encouraged it to cover the tags.

Dig that 3D effect. That is actually crazy hard to do. I mean, from what I understand.

I used to love this dragon. Whoever painted that had some serious skills with a spray can.

But this is what most of the neighborhood looked like. I am not sure why I took this photo. The most interesting thing to me about it now is that according to the sign in the top right, something apparently cost 25 cents. Nothing costs 25 cents in New York City anymore.

6th Street. I'm sure I was trying to show all the Indian restaurants, which are mostly still there.

You could pretty much count on seeing a couple of cop cars and an ambulance close by any time you stepped out your front door in those days. This was a high crime area. It's hard to overstate that - it was really a whole different way of thinking about life, and I am glad now that I don't have to live that way anymore. This scene was common but I think I took this photo to show a friend somewhere else.

This was one of the common tags around the neighborhood - you'd see this everywhere.

The 9th precinct, as seen at that time in "NYPD Blue." (They called it the 15th, but it was the 9th.)

This was also typical of what most of the neighborhood looked like. This was the middle of the day.

This was a junkyard or something on Avenue A; I am not totally sure because I didn't go there that much even though I only lived one block over. At that time, unless you lived there, you probably didn't have much reason to venture beyond 1st Avenue, and crime got progressively worse the further east you went. I knew a guy who lived on Avenue D and he told me he got chased home pretty much every night - it was almost like a game. I always pictured it like that sped-up scene in "A Christmas Story" where Scut Farkus is chasing Ralphie home. Or like the Keystone Kops, except with bad guys instead of cops.

This was my street - 3rd St. and 1st Ave. (The corner is right behind me here.) Dance Tracks was a pretty cool indie record store that sold (wait for it) dance music.

And that was my building on the left. The Hell's Angels headquarters was more or less across the street and I could watch them out my window. The NYPD hated them and did all they could to shut them down, but they were really good neighbors. They were quiet and kept to themselves, and believe me, nobody messed with anyone on 3rd St. because that was their territory. This was the safest block in the neighborhood. I never even heard so much as a car get broken into.

Maybe I'll post more after I scan some more stuff, or find more scans I've already done and lost (I swear I remember more from this era than this).

Vintage project guitar! Teisco? Kawai? Silvertone?

2013-05-24T02:01:00.001-04:00

Meet my new project - my first ever vintage guitar. m0j0! tonz!

I have no idea what it is. Something Japanese and from either the 60's or 70's. I have not been able to find this exact model anywhere. Here's a 1965 Silvertone that's close, with obviously the same pickups, but it's not the same guitar. It's the only one I've seen with these exact pickups, though, and in this configuration. If anybody knows what this really is, please email or comment! (Update: looks like it's probably a Kawai/Teisco. This Apollo shares many of the same features, including headstock shape, "string tree", false nut, neck shape, tremolo and truss rod style.)

It's missing the screws and springs for one pickup, something's not right with the knobs or pots because they don't fit together, and it's not wired. The switches above are not the problem they appear to be - I have those two white ones that actually are wired to two pickups, but the seller also sourced four vintage black ones that I could use if I wanted to. I kinda like white, though - I may try for two more white ones.

As messed up as it looks now, I've already made some progress on it since last night:

I attached everything to see what's missing (pretty important first step) and I really cleaned it up pretty good. The fretboard was (and really still is) kind of a disaster - all gunked up with caked on dirt and oil, and the frets themselves were actually brown - that's not just the lighting. I cleaned the fretboard really well and polished the frets as much as I could - they're as shiny as they're gonna get now. They're still in pretty bad shape, though, but then I bought this guitar as a piece of wall art that I can play at parties, so I'm not too worried about it.

You'll notice above that it came with a new, custom made pickguard. It actually looked like this before I got it:

I'm convinced that somebody dropped a bowling ball on this thing. One of the original pickups is also smashed (one pickup in the top photo is an exact replacement - it's not the one you think!). The previous owner was good enough to order a new pickguard for it.

I'm debating with myself about trying to go all vintage for the parts I need, or just getting it in playing shape with modern parts. Leaning toward the latter - this guitar isn't worth anything and likely never will be. As long as it looks the part and works, that's probably good enough.

My only real challenge is the wiring, but then that's partly why I wanted it - to learn how to really wire an unfamiliar guitar basically from scratch. I have no idea what I'm doing with four separate pickup selector switches like this. And three of the pickups have three wires (huh?) while the fourth has two. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with that, but I guess I need to LEARN OR DIE.

I'll post a new update when I'm done!

24 Hours Plus Before Dawn

2013-05-24T00:24:00.002-04:00

This is a B-SIDE. Yikes - I can't wait to hear what the new album sounds like if this wasn't good enough to be on it. This is how I've wanted Scandal to sound for years. I think this might be the first time I've heard a song that sounds like a natural progression from 2009's Doll, which was their first song on a major label.

English lyric translation borrowed from Scandal Heaven - it is just the kind of song it sounds like:

The end of the day that's like peeling off a scab
Is the setting sun hurting my eyes
A crow cries out that I'm a fool
The end of the day that's like peeling off a scab
Is my ideals hurting my eyes
I cry that I'm a fool

Hey, if I think about the reasons for love
I'll become an old lady before long
Hey, the reasons for my tears have swelled up
In the end there's no answer

Good, good, good, goodnight; life goes on
The spring shakes off flowers
But still, life goes on
The summer stands on top of someone's sweat
But even so, even so
I'll live on

The 24 hour plus of the night dawns and I yawn once
With a poker face on, the crow searches for breakfast in the trash
I hope that the blood coming out of my scabs stops
With my game face on, I throw yesterday in the trash

Hey, if you look for the meaning in love
You'll want to immediately run away
I already know the meaning of my tears
The answer to life is in this hand

Good, good, good, goodnight; life goes on
The fall makes hearts wander
I'll live on tomorrow too
The winter depends on warmth
Even if you're overwhelmed and defeated
You'll live on

But even so, even so
I'll live on

Obligatory link to buy this single, because otherwise what am I posting this for?

Mini guitars! From F-Toys and Media Factory

2013-05-17T14:25:00.002-04:00

I love mini-things. Take anything and make it mini and it's instantly cute, but do that while retaining all the detail of the original and then you've really got something amazing. I really couldn't help but pick up all of these that I saw on my trip to Japan last month - they're just too cool.

These are all limited edition and they only produce certain ones at certain times. Right now they're doing the 1962 Jazzmaster (how could I not buy that?), the 1968 Stratocaster and the 1962 Precision Bass. People seem to snatch these up as soon as a new batch is out there, so this is all they had at any of the stores I went to.

Each one comes with a pamphlet that has info on the exact guitars that served as the inspiration for the model. (All in Japanese, unfortunately, but... pictures!) I'm not sure they're all like this but the ones I have all show an original vintage guitar on the left and a reissue version on the right, so you can play spot-the-differences.

I've since picked up a couple more! I found the Gretsch and the 1954 Strat on Amazon Japan. They have a few others too, but it's not like I can just blow $100 on toys whenever I want. (These are about $20 each, plus shipping.) Yes, the cases do work and they look like a real case inside - I have that exact Jazzmaster case, so it's easy for me to compare. Some of these also come with accessories like bridge covers and back plates. All come with straps. It's probably hard to see, but they even have real strings!

I've decided to eventually collect all of these. Quite a project, especially since it seems difficult to figure out what's already been produced, and by whom - and all are limited. What I do know is that there are two companies producing mini guitar toys - these are from Media Factory, but there's a competing line from F-Toys. The standard scale is 1/8, although there are some anime-based collections that are 1/12 scale for some reason. This is what I know exists - please help me fill in the gaps if you know of any others:

Media Factory:

Fender "The Best" collection (1/8 scale) - still in progress, appears to be 6 models so far
Hide guitar collection (1/8 scale) - 7 models plus one secret model
K-on! guitar collection (1/12 scale) - 9 models
BECK guitar collection - "hyper grade" model (1/12 scale) - 10 models plus "some" secret models
BECK acoustic guitar special collection (1/12 scale) - 10 models plus "some" secret models
BECK guitar collection 4th stage (1/12 scale) - 10 models plus one secret model
BECK guitar collection 2nd stage (1/12 scale) - 9 models plus one secret model
Gretsch guitar collection - the Guitar Legend (1/8 scale) - 7 models plus one secret model
Gretsch guitar collection II (1/8 scale) - 7 models plus one secret model
The Guitar Legend Guitar Case by Zemaitis & Greco (1/8 scale) - 8 models
The Guitar Legend by Zemaitis & Greco (1/8 scale) - 10 separate models, 3 variations and "some" secret models

F-TOYS:

Fender guitar collection 1 (1/8 scale) - 13 models plus "some" secret models
Fender guitar collection 2 (1/8 scale) - 12 models plus what appears to be 2 secret models
Fender guitar collection 3 (1/8 scale) - 10 models

I may skip the anime stuff, although maybe not because they are real guitars and you can't get some of them otherwise.

I think it'll be fun to try to get all of these!

Aldious - District Zero

2013-05-16T18:08:00.000-04:00

One of the cool things about my job is that I get to meet really cool people. Last year we met, shot some video and then got to hang out for a little while with Re:NO, who is now the lead singer of this band, Aldious. She's actually really nice and very friendly. This kind of music was actually probably more my style when I was a little younger, but I still want to promote people that I like.

They're another type of band you don't often see in the United States - the all-female virtuoso metal band.

You can get this CD on Amazon Japan.

Random Picture Dump - Japan 2013 trip report END

2013-05-11T14:53:00.000-04:00

After every trip report I do, I end up with a bunch of photos that don't really belong anywhere else but that I think are funny, weird or just have their own little story behind them. I like to share those in one big picture dump at the end, along with any random thoughts I may have had about Japan this time - the country's in a constant state of change, and is now almost unrecognizable from when I first visited in 2000.

Some of these have already appeared individually on my Facebook and/or Twitter - sorry if you're seeing them a second time!

Japan's crazy about corn soup right now. (That's a pretty unlikely combination of words, if you think about it.) Here you can buy it in a vending machine. Of course, I had to.

This is vending machine corn soup. Looks like your basic cup of bile, right? It actually tasted good and hit the spot - it was cold that day.

This is a corn soup lollipop. Yes, I'm serious.

This is what that thing looks like. It is literally frozen corn soup on a stick. It even has real kernels of corn in it. This was... a little weird. Too sweet.

We hardly did any geeky, otaku or "moe" type stuff on this trip (am I outgrowing it? No!), but this @home cafe ad made me nostalgic for last year.

Also, you see the AKB48 billboard below... no, I still did not manage to get tickets. Sad face. I did notice that Japan didn't seem nearly as gaga over them as the last couple years, though. I think Maeda Atsuko leaving had a big effect. I didn't see nearly as many ads or other things on TV (I did see one show they co-hosted, but that's down from about 100 last year). There are a lot of new girl groups that it seems like are being groomed to replace AKB48 as a cultural phenomenon (in the same way AKB48 replaced Morning Musume), and meanwhile, a few of the individual girls are being heavily promoted on their own... without the rest of AKB. I feel like it's the beginning of the end. Some of the girls are almost 30 now, which is "old" for an idol group. And the new girls they bring in never seem to get as popular, because people always compare them to the original members. So idol groups like them always have a limited shelf life.

Doesn't this look like some sort of practical joke? Or the beginning of a carnival fun house ride? This was difficult to stand on!

This is the first ¥2,000 bill I've ever seen - I didn't know they existed before. It's like a $2 bill in the US - many people in Japan have apparently never seen one, and a lot of people just keep them as collector's items if they get one. I spent mine, because what the hell. Apparently these are more common in Okinawa, because the scene in the art is Okinawan.

What, you think I didn't go to McDonald's while I was there? Believe it or not, I don't post everything I do! I'm pretty sure I went four times, and on one of those trips, I tried out the "TeriTama" - or teriyaki egg burger. I like the regular one (no egg) better.

We had a little trouble figuring out the climate control in our Okinawa hotel, and came back one night to find actual ice on the windows. This is not because it was cold outside, but inside. That's condensation from the warm outside humidity that froze on the glass because we couldn't figure out how to turn off our air conditioner.

This is sake with real gold leaf. Nobody I was with knew this existed before - everyone was taking pictures! (It's cropped so close because this is my in-laws' house.)

We were very impressed with how clean this escalator was. You could eat off of it!

One of the interesting things about Japan is how many different types of jobs there are that we just don't have here. I could write a whole blog post about how their entire culture is geared towards providing full employment, whereas our culture rewards companies that cut workers, which we think of as "efficiency" (and then we wonder why nobody can find a job). But in Japan, there is literally a person whose job it is to stand at the end of escalators and just hold a rag against them as they slide by, thereby cleaning it. They do this on the steps and on the railings, all day. They just move from escalator to escalator, holding that rag in one place while the escalator moves under it.

In the US, we would consider this a waste. In Japan, well, the escalators need to be kept clean, and people need to work. There's no debate about these facts.

This was kind of sad, and weird. This is the remnants of the Grand Prince Akasaka, which was once our favorite hotel (I'm surprised to find that this is the closest thing to a writeup I ever did on it). It was a rotting husk after 2010 until the big earthquake, when it housed evacuees for a while. Now it's under demolition, using a new and very odd process that I had to look up just now - we had no idea what was going on when we took this photo. It looked like it had been converted into a four story office building for some reason.

We went back to Hooters! Both I and my wife actually really like Hooters in Japan. (This was her idea, seriously.) The food is actually good and Rina was cute.

I didn't post about it because it'd basically be redundant, but we actually did a ton more guitar store shopping this time - we literally went to at least 15 different guitar stores in both Shibuya and Ochanomizu, plus a bunch of thrift stores too. I bought these pedals plus the pedal case - these are both rare and really expensive outside of Japan (in the $400 range). I bought them at a thrift store for pretty cheap intending to resell them, but I can't part with either one!

The earthquake-bent tip of Tokyo Tower is finally FIXED!

Incidentally, you'll notice this is the same view we had the last two years. This is still from the Grand Arc Hanzomon, which has been a favorite of ours since the Grand Prince Akasaka closed, in large part because of this view, but also the big rooms and ridiculously low rates they charge. We were a little disappointed in their service this time, though - they seem to be getting very popular and I think the staff was a little overwhelmed when we were there.

Well, that's probably it for this trip. I'm sure I'll be back next year (at the latest), so look forward to that, I guess.

Shuri Castle - Japan 2013 trip report part 13

2013-05-11T01:47:00.002-04:00

The weather may have limited our options in Okinawa, but it's kind of obligatory that you go to Shuri Castle (Shuri-jo), so we braved the rain and fog. It actually ended up giving the place kind of a period-movie look - somehow it's easier to pretend you're really in the 1500's when the atmosphere's a bit dank. This castle was the seat of both political and military power in the old Ryukyuan Kingdom, when Okinawa was an independent country.

The path upward. Like most castles in Japan or China, Shurijo is up on one of the highest hills in the area - so you do a lot of climbing.

And the view downward to the surrounding area from inside the castle grounds. You can imagine how the king would have watched over his minions, and kept attackers at bay. It actually is genuinely interesting being in a place like this - it's very easy to put yourselves in the shoes of a castle guard and imagine what he would have been thinking as he saw this same view 500 years ago.

This is the main building, where the king would have lived.

Actually, Shuri-jo was almost totally destroyed during WWII, and this is a rebuilt structure. This doesn't mean as much in Japan as it does in the US - we're very hung up on originality, mostly because our country is so young that we still have a lot of our original historic buildings. Those we've lost have been replaced with strip malls more often than not, making us even more protective of the ones that remain.

But Japan (and Okinawa) are old enough that their historic buildings have often been rebuilt many times over already. By the time our country was born in 1776, this castle had already been here for 400 years, and had burned down and been completely rebuilt at least twice. So what's another rebuild after WWII?

This is one of those little things about Japan that I think most people probably don't realize (including tourists at these types of sites). I don't think any of the historic buildings I've been to in Japan are really more than about 40 years old, yet they remain major tourist attractions because the Japanese don't care about how old a piece of wood is, they care about the history of a place. And there seems to be a defiance about letting anyone destroy that history - they are going to rebuild things exactly as they were, whatever the cost.

This is part of the interior. My wife says you couldn't go inside at all when she came here during high school - probably it hadn't been rebuilt yet! Anyway I believe this is where the king's wife would have sat (I'm not sure if she was actually ranked a "queen"). The king's throne room is a lot more understated - basically just a raised platform in a plain room; not even a chair. All this ornate painting and decoration was associated with femininity.

I love miniatures. This is what the outdoor plaza above would have looked like during the coronation ceremony (at least I think that's what the sign said here).

The weather cleared up enough for me to buy this crazy ice cream. I actually don't remember all these flavors but none of them were what you'd expect by looking at it. I think one of them was persimmon, and I do remember the purple was sweet potato!

Like anyplace else touristy in Japan - including religious sites - there's a little village of souvenir stands and snack bars on the way down the hill, and there's a real restaurant that my wife said was also new.

The hill going down is lined with these trees with creepy above-ground roots!

Okinawa Food 2: Ashibina - Japan 2013 trip report part 12

2013-05-08T20:19:00.000-04:00

Admittedly probably hard to tell (all of these are cell phone photos), but this is a restaurant called Ashibina, specializing in local Okinawa food. This is the kind of place Okinawans go to eat after work - nothing fancy, but completely authentic. It was right near our hotel, and it came up highly ranked in searches we did.

Here's a map. Sorry I can't be more specific, but they have no web site and they don't even pop up often on English review sites (though they are English-friendly!). Open this up for a better look.

The (wet) menu, not that you can probably see anything. I was happy that inside, they had a charmingly hand-printed English menu that had apparently been prepared using MS Word. They only had one, but it seemed to be enough - I doubt they get more westerners than that every night. But they are a restaurant near a resort hotel, so they're not unprepared.

I didn't take pictures of the overall restaurant (it seemed rude) but we thought initially that we'd have to kneel at the table - this is the kind of Japanese place that has tables right at floor level. Interestingly, though, they've dug holes in the floor where the tables are, so you actually sit there as normal, with your feet below ground. Best of both worlds!

A few of the things we ordered:

Orion beer (of course!). I really like this beer - it's like a cross between Asahi, Sapporo and Kirin. It's has no aftertaste like Kirin, but it has some real flavor like Sapporo, and a hint of dryness like Asahi. That amuse-bouche next to the beer was tofu and... well, I'm not sure what. Cucumbers, a soy sauce-based sauce, and... maybe mushrooms?

Total Okinawa - my wife's fried goya itame. It is basically tofu, egg, spam and bitter melon, fried. An acquired taste, that's for sure - I couldn't have eaten this whole plate. A bite was enough for me.

One of Okinawa's traditional noodle dishes, soki soba. Soki is a kind of pork spare rib, with the bones removed.

I was a little afraid to be too adventurous so I ordered pork katsu. There was supposed to be something uniquely Okinawan about this (the menu proclaimed "Okinawa style tonkatsu!") but we couldn't figure out what it was. Possibly something about the sauce, which I didn't even take a picture of. This was fine, but I've already written about how Katsusen at Haneda Airport has ruined both of us for tonkatsu anywhere else.

If you have a coupon, you get a free plate of Okinawa pineapple. My wife had one on her phone and they said that was good enough. She was a little disappointed in this (she said it tasted like any pineapple) but I actually thought it was very good. Very sweet.

Go ahead, get it out of your system. This is a ball sack, and yes, I laughed a little too when they handed it to me on the way out. Actually, these are sata andagi, which are Okinawan donuts. They are a specialty of the region, and you can get them almost anywhere (and we had others), but these were definitely the best I've ever had. As with donuts, freshness counts, and these were just made. They were very crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

Many places seem to make these once a day and then sell them throughout, so they're soggy. Honestly, that's how I'd started to think they were supposed to be. But these were not, and because of that, they were really good. If you go to Okinawa - or anywhere that claims to sell Okinawa food - and get soggy andagi, go somewhere else!

Taco Rice in Okinawa - Japan 2013 trip report part 11

2013-05-08T00:26:00.001-04:00

Nearing the end of this trip report now - always a sad thing for me, because that's when it's really just a memory. But none too soon this time - I left for Japan almost a month ago, and returned more than 2 weeks ago! I'm already starting to forget details...

I do need to talk about Okinawa food. Okinawa's pretty interesting in that you're obviously in Japan, but the area has a really distinct local flavor - both figuratively and literally. The people look different (they are a different ethnicity), the cities feel different, it's all a lot more international, and the food has ingredients and flavors you would never, ever see in mainland Japan. You can get regular Japanese food in Okinawa, but being there just two days, we tried to cram in as much local Okinawa food as we could.

This is an actually pretty random shot of "International Street" (Kokusai Dori) in Naha. This street is great for souvenir shopping and has many beach- and tropical-themed stores, but we came here for one reason and one reason only: Charlie's Tacos.

Because when in Okinawa, you must eat Taco Rice.

(Ahem - please excuse my napkin.)

This taco rice is a little different than most in that the lettuce and tomato is on the side, but this is supposedly the original (or one of the original) versions of it. Charlie's Tacos began serving it in the 1950's, and I'm sure it's a post-war Asian/Western mashup, like a lot of things in Okinawa are. This may as well be the official dish of Okinawa at this point - it's like pizza in New York. And yes, it is basically just taco ingredients on rice. It is so good.

I forgot to get a pic of the outside of the restaurant, but here's one. It is not an easy restaurant to find, and there is no official web site.

I see a lot of people go to Charlie's Tacos (because it's famous), order actual Mexican food and then complain online about how bad the Mexican food is. Duh. Do not go to Okinawa and order Mexican food, please! Leave that for the locals, for whom Mexican food is still kind of exotic, if inauthentic. Order taco rice. That is what Charlie's Tacos is famous for, and it's a uniquely Okinawan thing.

CHARLIE'S TACOS KOKUSAI DORI
1-3-4 Matsuo, Naha, Okinawa Prefecture 900-0014, Japan
Tel: +81 98-861-9995
Reservations not required

More Okinawa food coming next!

Upgrading ALL Fender Jazzmaster wiring and electronics in one shot

2013-05-05T22:19:00.002-04:00

(I'll finish my Japan trip report up shortly; I just want to write this up while I'm thinking about it.)

Today I'm working on my Japanese (CIJ) Fender Jazzmaster, surprisingly one of my most popular subjects here! I know other people have found my DIY tips helpful. I've already upgraded the pickups, tremolo, added shielding and Loctited my bridge. Now I've decided that if something's worth doing, it's worth overdoing - I'm just going to go ahead and upgrade all the wiring and electronics.

I've said before that upgrading the pickups will get you 95% of the way to a vintage sound. Doing the wiring and electronics should get you the rest of the way (unless you consider "m0j0" part of that vintage sound). Japanese pots, caps and switches are all of the "cheap" variety, and while they feel fine, they're not what Fender has traditionally used and I've never been convinced of their internal quality (and I know I'm not the only one). The wiring is similarly junky.

This is what's under a Japanese Jazzmaster pickguard (not the copper shielding; that's mine). It's just kind of a mess of generic undersized electronics and thin plastic-insulated wire.

This is what we'll be replacing all that with:

That's a pre-made wiring harness that I bought off Ebay. There are a couple of guys doing this on Ebay right now, I bought the cheaper one. I think this is a good deal. There are several companies selling Jazzmaster wiring kits, and they generally cost around $70 just for all the parts. If you buy everything separately, it comes out to around the same amount. I bought this completed harness for $99 - I think the $29 markup over buying a kit is totally reasonable for someone to have done all the work of cutting everything to length, soldering everything properly and then organizing it all.

This harness comes with CTS potentiometers, Switchcraft switches, Vitamin Q paper-in-oil capacitors and cloth covered wire. That's mostly the stuff used in both vintage and AVRI Jazzmasters, although the caps are different (supposedly an upgrade even to American JM's) and the main pickup switch is cosmetically different (burled nut vs. hex nut).

It also came with a wiring diagram, although I didn't use it because it was confusing and didn't even seem to match the work already done! Instead, I just copied how my CIJ and AVRI wiring were hooked up already.

I also bought 2 feet extra of black cloth covered wire for the main ground lead - I recommend that. It cost me $1, also on Ebay.

Some specific comparisons:

Japanese tone and volume pots. Note the tiny (ceramic?) capacitor.

CTS tone and volume pots. It may not be obvious but these are actually much bigger - consider that the distance between pots is the same as the Japanese ones. Note the big PIO cap attached to the bottom of the pot. I was not even sure this would fit in my JM cavities!

Japanese roller pots and cap.

These pots aren't actually bigger, but the knobs are and obviously there's another PIO cap. Heavier gauge cloth covered wire is really obvious here!

The process for installing the new wiring harness is pretty straightforward - you just desolder your pickups, unscrew everything from the pickguard, then do the reverse for the new stuff. Optionally you can remove the tremolo so you can get at your ground wire and replace that too (I did that). There is one little hiccup that I knew was coming:

Because the new pots are so much thicker, you do need to widen the holes in the pickguard for them. Dremel to the rescue! I found that its smallest sanding attachment was perfect to drill through these holes and make them just the right size. Beware, though - it will literally start to melt the pickguard. There will be smoke, and it will stink.

Also, if you do not have any sort of metal shielding in your body cavities (and CIJ/MIJ Jazzmasters don't come with it), then you'll need to figure out how to ground your pickups some other way. This new harness I bought didn't have the grounding post for the neck pickup as my original harness did, and the post used for the bridge pickup is kind of tricky because it's already got a wire soldered to it. I decided to just attach my ground leads to my copper shielding - that's the way my AVRI is wired (and it's actually what the wiring diagram says to do).

The new harness attached to the pickguard. Now compare the volume and tone pots to the picture at the top...

Here's a picture of my soldering in progress. That middle post in the switch there is where the bridge pickup is grounded from the factory, but I couldn't even get that solder to melt on this new harness. (My soldering iron sucks.)

Here it is pretty much done. I soldered my main ground wire to the tone pot, but I hadn't run it through to the trem yet at this point.

One thing that I always find annoying when working on any sort of Jazzmaster is just how tight the space ends up being when you try to reattach the pickguard. In my case, I rested the pickguard on the body, strung up one string and tested everything out, and it all worked fine. I was pleased! However, actually getting the pickguard seated properly required a lot of jimmying of wires to make everything fit. The main problem is always that bundle that runs below the neck pickup, but I also had problems this time around the rhythm switch/roller pot area, which just didn't seem to have enough room.

At some point in all that jimmying, I lost functionality of my rhythm switch. Blah. Should just be a short.

Another reason to crack my pickguard back open - the new pots are too tall for my (real 1960's) witch hat knobs. Easy fix - just need some rubber or nylon washers to stick in as spacers between the pot and pickguard underneath. There's plenty of screw thread above the pickguard to allow you to do that.

Next day update: All fixed!

The rhythm switch problem was a short in one of the roller pots' wiring, caused by jamming everything in there too tight. I've learned that on Jazzmasters, sometimes all you've gotta do is just figure out a way to spread things out a bit.

Pots are also the proper height now. If you have this problem, look for a #32 top bibb gasket from your local hardware store. It's a perfect fit between the pot and pickguard to act as a spacer (the locking nut still goes on top, just under the pickguard). As someone pointed out in my comments, if you have pots that aren't separately grounded, then a rubber gasket may not be the best option unless you want to add ground wires to your pots. In my case, both of my pots have ground wires already so I didn't need to ground them through contact with the pickguard shield, and in that case using rubber as a spacer works fine.

This thing's a tone monster now. It's smoooooooooooth. That's the word I'd use. It's like Billy Dee Williams in his prime. I'm still using Seymour Duncan Antiquity II pickups, not the stock CIJ pickups. This guitar already sounded great, but now it really just has a smoothness and warmth that I swear is new. I'm not sure if I like the linearity of the tone pot, but I can always change that individually if I so choose.

I'd put this thing up against any other Jazzmaster. Any.

Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium - Japan 2013 trip report part 10

2013-05-04T16:39:00.001-04:00

I was pretty depressed given the weather situation in Okinawa, but on day 2 the skies calmed down just enough for us to make the long drive to the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Motobu - probably about 30-40 miles from our hotel. There's also a beach right nearby and my wife was determined to "go in the water" at least once while we were in Okinawa, even if that just meant dipping her toes in so she could say she did.

OKINAWA CHURAUMI AQUARIUM
424 Ishikawa, Motobu-cho, Kunigami-gun, Okinawa 905-0206, Japan
Hours: 8:30AM - 5:30/10PM (depending on season and day)

It was worth the drive. It's an amazing aquarium. First, does it kind of remind you of the Overlook Hotel? It's a really interesting building. Inside, it looks brand new even though it's 10 years old. It's spacious and modern, and when we went, at least (actually pretty late in the day), it was not crowded at all. The last aquarium I went to was the New York aquarium, which is none of those things. I'm glad we have an aquarium in New York, but the Churaumi aquarium was just a much different experience.

Of course they have a lot of different exhibits and many fish I'd never seen before, because they specialize in this part of the world. Like this happy little guy:

But the centerpiece is obviously the main tank, which is unbelievably huge and includes whale sharks and manta rays in addition to regular fish:

They even have theater style seating so you can just sit there like this and watch, as if you're in an IMAX movie theater. Hey, down in front!

Another view:

There's a restaurant on the right side where you can sit and eat and watch the fish.

One thing I have never personally seen in an aquarium is the ability to go up top and see the tank from above, where all the magic happens:

This is not a guided tour or anything, you just take the elevator up and there you are. It's completely marked so it's definitely open to the public, and there was a staff member standing near the exit (you can see her in the top right) to guide people around if they needed it.

Whale shark from above.

Outside the aquarium they have separate buildings with tanks for manatees, turtles and dolphins.

I highly recommend this place, especially if the weather turns bad on your trip to Okinawa. There aren't a lot of other real indoor tourist attractions, and this has to be one of the best aquariums in the world.

As for the beach, we actually did visit before going into the aquarium, and my wife did get to dip her toes in the water (and I did too).

This is Emerald Beach, right next to the aquarium (you can walk). It was still cloudy and rainy and the beach was therefore "lightly attended".

One thing I found kind of annoying is that wherever you were actually allowed to swim, they had these rubber booms out. My wife thinks it's because Okinawa actually has killer jellyfish and these booms protect swimmers from them. (Note that my link flatly and ominously states that "You have virtually no chance of surviving the venomous sting, unless treated immediately.")

I probably would not go swimming in that water, though, with that algae buildup caused by the booms. The booms ensure there is basically no wave action and no natural circulation of water - it turns this little circle of the ocean into a static pool.

In general there seemed to be a lot of rules about where you could go and what you could do. Lots of signs saying not to climb on rocks, not to swim in various areas, etc. It didn't give me that feeling of natural freedom that I normally get when I go to the beach.

Next up: Okinawa food!

Arriving in Okinawa - Japan 2013 trip report part 9

2013-05-04T00:00:00.001-04:00

For as long as I've known her, my wife has been trying to get me to Okinawa. She'd apparently taken a trip there when she was younger that sounded similar to a life-changing trip I'd taken to Hawaii many years ago, so I understood. As an American, all I really knew about Okinawa was that it was the scene of a pretty terrible battle in WWII. But the Japanese think of it differently - it is their Hawaii, and a hugely popular tropical vacation destination. (Of course, like Hawaii or Puerto Rico, native Okinawans apparently have some mixed feelings about the mainland.)

We planned just two days there - enough to get some local flavor, maybe some beach lounging in, and maybe a couple nights just sitting out on our hotel room balcony enjoying the waves like we did in St. Maarten. We really loved the peaceful feeling that gave us, and Okinawa's a similar kind of place.

Unfortunately for us, we were greeted with this:

And that did not stop for the duration of the trip. Well, not until the day we left, of course!

This is the first time we've had weather really mess up our travel plans. And that's including riding out at least two typhoons that I can remember. Tokyo's mostly an indoor city so unless the transit system completely shuts down, it's still possible to do most things no matter what the weather. But Okinawa's an outdoor kind of place - if it rains, you're pretty much screwed.

We did find a few things to do, and I'll write about those in separate posts, along with another post about the food!

Like on St. Maarten, we rented a car in Okinawa - it is pretty much the only real way to get around the main island unless you want to stay completely in Naha (which has a monorail system).

This was our car - a Toyota Allion. An interesting car! I'd requested a compact (and they sure had some on the Budget lot) but inside, this thing was about as big as a Camry. Trunk space, however, was pretty abysmal, and the whole thing seemed pretty stubby. I read later that this car exists basically to satisfy some Japanese legal requirement for offering cars smaller than a mid-size but bigger than a compact, so it ends up being really spacious inside but small on the outside. Anyway, it served us really well and was very comfortable for a tall guy like me. It also didn't constantly rattle like the Hyundai Getz we had in St. Maarten - it felt like a real car.

We stayed at the Kafuu Resort Fuchaku Condo Hotel, which is also an interesting hotel. Just for reference, here's an official photo of the exterior:

Now, I know hotels embellish their photos a bit - I don't mean to sound like a spoiled brat, there's just one point I want to make. Here's a real photo:

Doesn't the official photo make it look like the hotel's right on the beach? Now that I squint, I can see that there's a road there in their photo, but it looks kind of like a hotel service or entrance road. It still looks like you can just hop on over it and be on the beach. In fact, that's a main road and quite busy, and it's down a big hill - it's kind of a trek. Oh, and there's no swimming allowed in that water, because it's used for some kind of fish farming. So, yeah - that was kind of disappointing.

That said, it's still a pretty cool hotel with a great view (if the sun's out). Here's a 180 degree panorama:

And this is the balcony from our room. HUGE balcony. Much bigger than our balcony in St. Maarten. Unfortunately the weather just did not cooperate, and the road is really bothersome. At night it was just wet and sticky out there, and rather than the sound of waves, we had the sound of traffic.

Ganbatte, sun! I see a little patch of water out there getting some rays...

Now, I need to talk about our room, because it was amazing. It was literally a condo, but at a regular hotel price. This hotel has two sides, one condos and the other regular hotel rooms - you can choose either, and there are pros and cons to each side (no room cleaning in the condo, for example). But it seems like what they do is just rent out the unoccupied condos to temporary guests, so you have the full suite of features that anyone living there would have, including separate living and sleeping rooms, a full kitchen, washing machine, etc. We were joking that we could move right in and stay there forever.

That's a panorama shot of the living space only. The bedroom is down the hall to the left. And you should see the shower - it was bigger than one of the bedrooms in my house!

After we dropped off our bags, we headed out to see what we could do in the rain. The first day it rained so hard that we really just couldn't do much of anything - so we went to McDonald's.

That's a Green Tea McFlurry! (With... Oreos in it?)

We did eat some great local Okinawa food and did some cool stuff on day 2, so watch for that soon.

HND-OKA and flying Japan domestic - Japan 2013 trip report part 8

2013-05-02T12:58:00.000-04:00

For our final few days in Japan this year, my wife and I decided to head to Okinawa - mainly to use up some JAL miles that were about to expire. Free trip! Okinawa's been called the Hawaii of Japan, so I've been wanting to check it out for a while. I'll have other posts about all the stuff we did on this short side trip (and the unlucky weather).

I was actually a little nervous about flying domestically in Japan. How do you check in? Would security be different than flying in/from the US? Would any of the signs or announcements be in English? Do they serve food on the plane? Google was actually no help - this is one of those subjects that just brings up a ton of spam but no real info. So maybe this post can actually be of use to someone.

We booked an early morning flight to Okinawa so we'd have most of the day left once we got there. To major destinations in Japan, both ANA and JAL fly more than a dozen times per day from Tokyo. To Okinawa, Japan Airlines has flights about every 30 minutes - and these are widebodies, not dinky little regional jets!

This is not a widebody - this is the Airport Limousine Bus bus to Haneda Airport. Tokyo's airports are well connected by rail but still, if you're staying near the Tokyo City Air Terminal and you have a bunch of bags, bus is the way to go. This was pretty much rush hour and you see how empty this bus is.

This is the "Giant Sky Wheel" - at one time the world's largest ferris wheel, from the bus.

I've previously written about Haneda so I won't spend too much time talking about it here. It is an impressive airport. JAL domestic flights are from Terminal 1, the older and slightly less architecturally interesting of the two domestic terminals. One tip if you're flying out of there: don't feel pressured to just get food at the Starbucks before going through security. There are tons of stores and restaurants past security at Haneda. Though I'll say this - the clerk who helped me at the T1 Starbucks spoke English better than I do!

The boarding process is different from the US. I didn't realize that I already had my boarding pass. When you first book a domestic ticket online, you're asked to print out something that looks like this:

This is the boarding pass. I was confused by this at first - I kept reading the instructions at the bottom and thinking "so when do I get my boarding pass?" I'm used to printing out itineraries for my flights like this, but when I go to the airport, they look at this, look at my ID and then print me a boarding pass. Flying Japan domestic, this paper is literally all you need to get on the plane. The guy at the check-in counter even looked confused when I tried to hand him my passport for identification - he just gave it back without even opening it.

If you don't have this, they'll print you another one. Then it's kind of like the process we're used to.

Security is a little different too. For one thing, no shoe removal! And no nude-o-scopes. Japan has not gone batshit crazy with fear like we have. There's only one line and it's short and moves fast. You do still need to take your laptop out of the bag... and I dropped mine on the floor when putting it back in, which physically bent it. Blah.

Security prints you a receipt that has the boarding information that would otherwise be on a boarding pass. You don't need this to board the plane, though, it's just informational.

Our plane again, one of JAL's 777-300's (not ER). They use these for domestic flights - no first class but lots of "Class J" (economy plus). We flew in Class J - as a 6'4" guy, I really cannot handle modern economy class on any airline anymore.

Our seats. It's quite nice having a 2-4-2 layout! My wife and I got to sit together, by ourselves, with both a window and an aisle.

Obligatory legroom shot. Again, I am 6'4", so this isn't bad. I'm getting old and spoiled, so this is actually kind of the minimum I try to get these days.

Still not enough room for me to cross my legs in this seat, but I was comfortable enough and this was the best we could do on this flight. JAL does have signs at the check-in counters where you can upgrade to first class for only 8,000 yen (about $80), but obviously only if the plane has it. The seats in Class J are the "slide forward" type of recline despite all that extra seat pitch, so my knees still ended up pretty close to the seat in front as I tried to sleep during the flight.

Really crappy shot of the Class J cabin - this was actually on our way back, when we could only get middle seats.

If you're wondering about English announcements, oddly enough on our flight out all announcements were in Japanese only, but on the way back they were in both Japanese and English. On the outbound flight, a cabin attendant even came over to explain to my wife (who is Japanese) that the announcements would only be in Japanese and she would have to translate for me. I'm not sure if they were just down an English-speaking cabin attendant that day or if there's some actual policy, like making dual announcements only if there are X number of westerners on board.

JAL has a very limited drink and snack service on this route, and it's probably the same to other domestic destinations. You actually get better options on the shinkansen - unfortunately there's no shinkansen tunnel to Okinawa! There's also no personal IFE, although JAL does show pre-recorded TV on the main cabin monitors. I spent the two and a half hour flight watching that and trying to sleep.

The descent into Okinawa was rough. And very strange. We seemed to pop under the clouds at about 5,000 feet and then just hung there for a long time. Lots of turbulence and rain, which was a bad omen.

I snapped this shot on the way out - not gonna see sights like that for very much longer. (The 744D's are all being retired - this is one of the last ones.)

I didn't get many (or really any) pics of Okinawa's airport - it's pretty unremarkable. (Wikipedia has a couple good photos if you really want to see it.) Though here's a shot of my Naha Airport ramen on the trip back to Tokyo:

That's one thing I love about Japanese airports and train stations - they actually attract good food, because duh, that's where all the people are at meal times! (Notice the bitter melon in that ramen - that's an Okinawa specialty.) It's not just a bunch of McDonalds' and Burger Kings. This is one of those things about Japan that makes you smack your forehead and say "of course! Why didn't we think of that?" Why do real restaurants actually avoid airports in the west?

Anyway, more from Okinawa shortly!

Robot Restaurant - Japan 2013 trip report part 7

2013-05-01T21:59:00.000-04:00

Now this is what I think of when I think of Tokyo. Bright lights, robots, half-naked dancing girls, fire eaters, and animatronic dinosaurs. Of course - it's Kabukicho!

This is the Robot Restaurant. And if you're looking for Tokyo's wild side, it doesn't get much crazier.

ROBOT RESTAURANT
1-7-1 Kabukicho Shinjuku-Ku Tokyo
Tel: 81-3-3200-5500
Reservations required (accepted online)

The Robot Restaurant is not, strictly speaking, a restaurant. I've long since learned that you don't go to themed restaurants in Tokyo for the food (though some are better than others), but this one practically flushes all pretense. What the Robot Restaurant is is a kind of futuristic burlesque show. With robots. And of course, lots of girls.

When you first arrive, you have to buy a ticket from a vending machine (it's Japan!). They charge ¥5,000 and you get to choose between four different bento boxes for dinner. Then you put your stuff in a locker - they really don't like you bringing anything down there except a camera, they love cameras! - and head to the waiting room.

It was empty when we got there, but it filled up fast. We had a beer and took some pics up here. On the wall, they've posted photos of a bunch of famous people that have passed through - there really have been quite a few in the short time this place has been open, but the only ones I remember right now are JJ Abrams and Tim Burton.

At 7:30, they take you down this crazy stairwell. (Ok, this is actually the return trip up, but it's the same thing in reverse.)

When you enter the theater, they hand you your bento box. This was mine. I actually don't remember what it was, but it surprisingly wasn't too bad. Just small. You're meant to eat before the show starts - this is not the kind of thing where you can divide your attention between watching and eating!

Fire! You will notice how close these guys are to us. I could feel the heat as they were throwing these things around. There are two stages at either end of the room, and then this dance floor in the middle. They tell you to watch your feet, because you're gonna get run over if you stick them out too far.

The show has several different acts. This was one of them. We didn't get photos of them all. Here's another:

Gah! Robots! This was crazy. There's a guy in there but the suit is about 12 feet tall and obviously very, very heavy and they wheel him out on what's basically a forklift, with a guy standing in front making sure he doesn't fall over. But once he's off, he's on his own, lumbering all over the floor and coming perilously close to falling on the customers. This place seems very dangerous!

Of course there are the girls to take your mind off all that.

More girls!

And more robots and girls. The ending of this thing is crazy - it's like you put every stereotype anyone ever had about Tokyo or Japan in a big blender, pushed the button for "puree" and then shattered it while it was running. This show is like being hit in the face with all those shards of glass and bits of Tokyo pop culture puree. In a good way.

I was actually skeptical before we went, but it's really impossible not to get caught up in it. It's a fun show.

At the end, all the girls come around and high-five everyone in the first row - and randomly in the second and third rows. I do recommend sitting in front, though - it wasn't hard to get a seat there, just don't dawdle.

On our way out, we were asked to fill out a survey - because I'm obviously a westerner, and they seem very interested in why westerners seem to like their show so much. It does at times feel like a show created more for a westerner's idea of pop culture Japan than something Japanese would actually want to see, although I usually hate stuff like that and it won me over pretty quickly. (Then again, I can't fully escape my own culture bias.) The crowd was about 50/50 split between western and Japanese when we went, and surprisingly also about 60/40 male & female too. There were a lot of couples like us, and my wife had fun too. Who doesn't like dancing girls and robots??

Unless I find something I missed, this is going to be my last post from Tokyo. The next day, it was onward to Okinawa! I'll have more about that coming up!

Make your own plastic Japanese replica food - Japan trip 2013 part 6

2013-04-29T00:43:00.003-04:00

Every place on Earth has weird things about it that all visitors notice but nobody really talks about, either because they're too trivial or just too... well... weird. Japan actually has a lot of little things like that, but one of the most obvious is the plastic representation of the menu outside every restaurant (including high-end ones).

This is one of those things that never makes it into any travelogue but any time you talk to someone who's been to Japan you eventually end up in an "I know, right??" moment about this. It's both strangely horrifying and a little amazing how detailed and realistic these plastic replicas are.

Well, now you can make them yourself!

In what I think is a complete stroke of genius, there's a store in the Tokyo Skytree Town that now sells kits that allows you to replicate the oddly specific Japanese practice of creating inedible representations of restaurant food. This is apparently a tradition that dates to the Taisho era - who knew?

GANSO-SAMPLE

TOKYO SKYTREE TOWN, 4th Floor

Tel: 03-5809-7089

Hours: 10:00 - 21:00

Whereas restaurants no doubt simply go to a restaurant supply store and buy pre-made dishes (perhaps created to order by skilled artisans), you can now spend $20 and up on a kit that allows you to express your own inner creativity in the medium of plastic food!

I kid, but in actual fact this is one of those ideas that I'm surprised took so long to hit someone. It really is an idea that was just "out there" for the taking.

Of course, I had to buy a kit. That spaghetti bowl on the top left - that had to be mine. I needed the craziest thing they had that was not completely beyond my skill level and did not cost more than $20. (And some of these things do reach up to $100 or so!).

You'll notice that this is "middle level". Eh, I used to build plastic models of ships when I was a kid - how hard could a bowl of spaghetti be?

This is what you get in the kit. I was surprised that it's actually wax-based, not plastic - though that does make sense. Everything is made of wax! Here you've got the raw spaghetti on the bottom left, the paper bowl, a bag full of sauce, a few bags full of toppings (green pepper, bacon, mushrooms and onion), the base, stand and fork, and both Japanese and English instructions.

The box itself only comes with Japanese instructions, but the cashier at the store noticed I was western and was helpful enough to throw English instructions in the bag.

First step. If you're wondering how they get the spaghetti to stand up like in that photo above, well, here's how the magic happens. The secret's out!

I think I did a pretty good job with this. It already looks like a real bowl of spaghetti - maybe even moreso than when I was finally finished!

To get it this way is almost like actually cooking a real bowl of spaghetti. You put the pasta in a bowl of hot water to make it soft, then wrap it around the fork and stand. For the toppings, you do the same thing so they're soft enough to cut. Then you glue them to the spaghetti.

After adding the sauce, "parsley" and a gloss finish, this is my finished product. It looks pretty much like it did in the store! Yes, the color is quite intense.

btw, I used this for the finish:

The instructions just recommend "gloss spray", so anything similar would work.

I don't really think it's quite this realistic, but just in case, there are many warnings like this given in the box. I will say that at the end, there is kind of an odd disconnect between the way it looks and the way it smells. Especially when applying the lacquer.

The cover of the Japanese instructions and the store card.

Try this out! It's definitely a uniquely Japanese thing and kind of funny. I wonder if there are people with display cases full of fake food in their houses.

Katsusen - the BEST pork restaurant in Tokyo - Japan trip 2013 part 5

2013-04-26T21:58:00.001-04:00

I want to show you the best pork cutlet restaurant I have ever been to. It's worth devoting an entire post to this. And this restaurant is at an airport. (Don't let that deter you. Ever heard of Jiro Dreams of Sushi? That restaurant is in a subway station.)

KATSUSEN Tonkatsu
HANEDA Airport, International Terminal
4F, EDO Market
Tel: 03-5708-7448
Hours: 10:00 – 23:00

I actually wrote a little about this place after my last trip, but not enough. Because we went back this time, and I realized that the amazing pork kattsu (cutlet) that I had last year was not a fluke. I am confident in saying, as someone who has eaten pork kattsu at plenty of restaurants reputed to be known for this dish, that this is at the very least one of the best pork kattsu restaurants in the world. (If you don't believe my recommendation, my wife - who is from Japan - says this place has ruined her for every other pork kattsu restaurant.)

The menu is obviously specialized in pork, and you can get different cuts of it. Honestly, they're all good - I've had the tenderloin and the "regular", I don't think you can go wrong with either. This place specializes in Berkshire pork, although they have standard Japanese pork as well.

The chef breads your pork right in front of you, using fresh bread crumbs the likes of which I have not previously seen. I believe they are freshly made, and they're quite large - almost more like crutons. (It's really these bread crumbs that separate this place from literally every other tonkatsu restaurant I've ever been to.) It's fun watching the chef work.

This is my pork frying in a wok full of hot oil. Mmmmm, anticipation!

And the finished product. A very simple dish, but one of the most satisfying you will ever have. Just freshly breaded pork, deep fried; with rice, shredded cabbage, Japanese pickles and sauces. There is also a clam-infused miso soup that seems unique to this restaurant. Everything here tastes incredibly fresh, the meat melts in your mouth, and even the sauces taste like they've been made to order. Again, it's the texture of the fried bread crumbs that really makes this place the best of the best, though - the crust ends up being light and airy in a way that no other tonkatsu restaurant I've ever eaten at could match.

And here's the outside of the restaurant again, in case you need a reminder.

Haneda is worth the trip as a tourist for many different reasons, but be sure to stop here any time you go. I know I will.

ANA Maintenance Facility Tour - Japan trip 2013 part 4

2013-04-25T10:00:00.000-04:00

If you're looking for an experience that's uniquely Japanese, it's hard to really top this. Nowhere else in the world that I know of can you take a tour of a major airline maintenance facility in operation - not some mothballed dilapidated hangar on the edge of an abandoned airfield (though that'd probably be pretty cool too), but an actual working facility with in-service airliners being worked on as you walk through.

It's even free, though difficult to sign up for if you don't speak Japanese. Both JAL and ANA give tours of their facilities, though ANA's is a little easier for foreigners to get into because they do at least have an online form (all in Japanese, as will be their email confirmation). Beware, though - you do need to book months in advance.

ANA Component Maintenance Facility Tour
3-5-4 Haneda Kuko, Ota-ku, Tokyo 144-0041

Cost: Free

Reservations Required
http://www.ana.co.jp/cp/kengaku/

Directions: Tokyo Monorail (local) to Shin-Seibjio station, then walk 15 minutes

That's the basic route. When we went, we found hardly any decent directions online to help us get there, so I'm happy to be of service. It's a pretty weird walk, too - as an American, it feels like walking somewhere you're not supposed to be.

Eventually you will see signs, and they are typically Japanese (ie. cute).

The building sign, which says ANA Component Maintenance Building (or "Biru", really).

The credentials you're handed when you arrive, including a neck badge (which you get to keep) and pamphlet about the facility and their planes. It's pretty interesting that ANA is still promoting the 787 so heavily given the problems they've had with it, but no doubt a lot of this stuff was printed long ago.

Later, they also give you a clear file folder with pictures of their planes on it.

Inside the lobby, there's an actual L-1011 cockpit.

The lobby also has a small sitting area for snacking, as well as a gift shop. I didn't get pictures of those, but this guy did. I bought one of those little desk models of a 787 there.

Obviously, the facility is guarded by a giant robot. It's Japan, DUH.

No doubt they expect a lot of kids on this tour, so some of this stuff is for them. But there does seem to be a promotional tie-in between Gundam and the airline right now.

ANA loves to decorate their planes with cartoon characters. I got a photo of another (real) Pokemon 747 in Okinawa - I'll share that later.

This was in the auditorium - they give you a sort of briefing with a little talk about the airline and several videos showing planes being built and whatnot. Probably my favorite video they showed was actually during "break" time when nobody else was paying attention - it was a history of the flight attendants' uniforms. Other than the lack of a hat, the current ones are actually the best (yes, that's AKB48 in ANA uniforms, but that's pretty much what all their f/a's really look like!). Generally the Japanese airlines have always been very conservative with their uniforms, unlike US airlines.

Interestingly, they tell you at this point that you need to ask permission to use any photos you take on the tour, for any purpose including blogs, Facebook, etc. I'm not sure that's legally enforceable but I did ask for and received permission to use all the photos taken on ANA property in this post. Hopefully that'll discourage some people from stealing my photos, since you'll have ANA after you, not just me.

Inside the hangar. This is one of ANA's 787's being worked on. This was during the plane's grounding, so I'm not quite sure what they were doing. Maybe removing the original battery system to prepare for installation of the new one.

The same plane's tail.

Buried under all that scaffolding is one of the airline's few remaining 747-400D's. The tour guide explained that they were all being retired this year, so this was really a rare treat that I'm glad I didn't miss. This plane seemed to be undergoing a C check. (Incidentally, I later discovered after researching the registration number that this was the same plane involved in an infamous - and fatal - 1999 hijacking that came very close to disaster.)

The mechanics working on the flap and spoiler systems of the 747. Obviously part of the point of this tour is to give you confidence in ANA's safety. It's also partly to promote airline life so kids will grow up wanting to work there.

Tire storage - they had racks for all the different planes they operate. I think they said they can recycle/resurface a tire something like eight times before throwing it out.

747-400D engine being worked on. The tour guide said they can check engines here, but if they find any problem, they have to send it somewhere else to get fixed. (If I remember right, I believe she said they need to send them to Narita!)

ANA's 747's and older 777's have nose wheel cameras, and the guide actually pointed out where they are. Their newest 777-300ER's have a belly camera but I've never seen a nose cam on takeoff or landing, which is a shame. JAL still uses them on their new 777's.

787 reverse view.

747-400D again. You kind of make a full circle of this hangar, starting inside and up above, and moving down and outside as you come back around.

Another 787 sitting outside. Interestingly, it was powered up despite the grounding and battery issues - I have video of its engines spinning. I wonder what they were doing...

Back over to the first 787 and its engines. These were not running, obviously.

787 tail/empennage from below.

And this is the hangar itself, from the enclosed pedestrian bridge over the road that connects the office building where the lobby and auditorium are. The tour guide pointed out that out the window on the other side, you can see the "D" runway - I took off from that runway for Okinawa the following day.

This was one of the highlights of the trip - not often you get to do something like this unless you happen to be an airplane mechanic. It was really cool.

Vampire Cafe - Japan 2013 trip report part 3

2013-04-23T00:05:00.000-04:00

A bunch of our plans actually fell through on this trip, so a few nights we were looking for something to do. I actually Googled "unique restaurants in Tokyo" and found the Vampire Cafe on almost every list, so we decided to check it out.

We were greeted by the guy who's probably the owner - and he was pretty gruff (but may have just been playing the "vampire" part, as he was pretty well decked out). The servers are all dressed in gothic maid outfits - my wife may have gotten a picture of one of them, but I'm still waiting for her iPhone pics. I'll update this post if I ever get them.

The restaurant itself is predictably dark and all red and black, with each booth curtained for privacy. There's not that much to take pictures of, honestly - there is one communal table in the middle, and this coffin (excuse the smeared lens):

All the food is kind of cutely gothic in presentation, in the way Japanese gothic anything is.

That's obviously the dessert menu - and sorry for the blurrycam, my picture taking skills were not at their best this night!

Our appetizers. Coffin-shaped garlic bread, which I thought was pretty neat, and some kind of sushi thing for my wife, in the shape of a cross.

My spaghetti carbonara, with a bat tortilla in the middle. (I don't think you're really meant to eat it; it's just decoration.)

And our fairly impressive dessert, complete with sugar work. I'm actually not sure how this is supposed to be vampire themed but I guess the sauce is meant to be blood. The sugar work looks like butterfly wings, though. But it definitely looks tasty in any case. I want to eat it again just looking at the picture.

We both joked about the fact that it has corn flakes in it - ever since our visit to Maid Station and its corn flake-based tiramisu, we expect that from every themed restaurant we go to in Tokyo. In this case, though, the corn flakes actually added a nice crunch to what would otherwise be a single-texture dessert.

You don't really go to a place like this for the food but overall it was actually surprisingly good and not too expensive. Our total bill for my wife and me was under ¥6,000 - about $60 - for everything, including drinks. I've read complaints from others about the prices but I really don't understand how you could spend $100 for two people here, unless that was in the days of 78 yen exchange rates (but then your complaint is not really with the restaurant).

I feel like the atmosphere is surprisingly a little more forced, and actually a little old and ragged by Japanese standards. Also, the service was really slow - even after ringing our table bell several times, we often ended up having to just grab a waitress as she walked by.

Not sure it's worth going back, but it was a fun way to kill an evening.

Definitely make reservations if you plan on going - several people were turned away outright as we were waiting for our reserved table.

VAMPIRE CAFE

6-7-6 Ginza Chuo, Tokyo 104-0061, Japan

+81 3-3289-5360

Staying online in Japan - renting a Pocket Wifi

2013-04-22T09:43:00.002-04:00

Kind of a quick digression from the rest of my trip report, but I just want to show you one thing that made our lives SO MUCH EASIER on this trip:

As is probably obvious, that's a Pocket Wifi LTE. It runs on Emobile's LTE network in Japan, which is extensive - they claim it covers 94% of the country. I got it from PuPuRu.

PuPuRu isn't really the cheapest or best known rental company, but they had the advantage of actually having this thing in stock at the last minute - a lot of rental companies sell out really early. Also, they have flexible rental periods; some companies charge you for either 7 or 14 days, but nothing in between. Pupuru just charges by the day, so the total price came out about average (about $10 a day). And the rental process was very easy - a package was waiting for me at my hotel, and returning it was as simple as dumping it in a mailbox right outside the security line at Narita Airport.

When I first went to Japan in 2000 and up to as recently as last year, I knew that as soon as I got on the plane at JFK, I was basically going to be in internet darkness for the most part until I got back. Even hotels there have spotty internet - at most, you're still lucky to get a wired connection for free. (An improvement over my first trip, when hotels there were still using dialup.) Forget about free public wifi, and a lot of American cell phones don't work in Japan. Mine does, but the roaming rates are ridiculous. I can't tell you how many times we'd get lost on every single trip to Japan - even people from Tokyo have trouble navigating the city because of its archaic addressing system.

Wifi is so bad there because domestic cell phone service is so good - that's what everybody uses when they're outside anywhere. So why not just carry a device that takes advantage of that? The Pocket Wifi is a mobile hotspot, and I was able to use it everywhere - even on trains, even underground, and in Okinawa too. It was awesome - especially now that Google Maps supports transit directions in Tokyo. We never got lost! And we had something to do during those long, boring subway trips.

I highly recommend this. One tip - get the one with the 7 hour battery, at least. And maybe rent a spare.

Tokyo Skytree to the top! - Japan 2013 trip report part 2

2013-04-22T01:53:00.002-04:00

I previously visited the then-incomplete Tokyo Skytree last March, but it finally opened in May of last year and on this trip, we were able to take a ride to the top.

Tokyo Skytree is the most amazing tower you've probably never heard of (and the tallest in the world). Honestly, I don't really know why it's not more famous outside of Japan - within Japan, it's everywhere. We even saw a giant model of it at Charlie's Tacos in Okinawa! It's become the new icon of Tokyo, and it's so much taller than every other structure in the city that you can literally see it from anywhere. It's a new anchor point in the skyline, which is something that Tokyo has always lacked.

Because it's so popular in Japan itself, it's best to get there early and hopefully on a weekday. It didn't initially seem too crowded when we went. But when you arrive, you get kind of a pre-ticket telling you when you can buy actual tickets:

I've seen other people complain about this, but I actually think it's pretty cool. The alternative would be waiting in line for like four hours. We got this at around noon, so we were able to hop back on the subway and do some shopping in Ochanomizu while we waited for our scheduled time. It's not like you have to sit around the Skytree twiddling your thumbs - go do something else in the meantime.

We returned at 3 and bought our actual tickets. The tickets have two possible designs - collect them both!(?)

This is the Tembo Deck, which is the lower deck in the pic at the top - you can tell by its shape. This is where you standard ticket takes you, which costs ¥2,000 for an adult. It's 350 meters high (about 1,150 feet). For some people, that's no doubt high enough. But we wanted to go all the way.

For the 450 meter high (1,476 feet) Tembo Galleria, you need to buy the ticket separately on the Tembo Deck. It costs another ¥1,000. So yeah, it's about $30 just to go as high as you can on this thing. Come on, how often are you going to be in Tokyo? Just do it.

This is the Galleria. The Galleria is kind of crazy - it is actually a little scary, and I am not particularly afraid of heights. The wild thing is that it's this tube that is literally just bolted onto the outside of the tower (see this image), and they actually accentuate that fact by making it an upward spiral - so you can see one end of it from the other. (In fact, you can pay them to take your photo through the glass from one end to the other below, which also shows off the city far below you.)

This is Sorakara Point, the highest point you can reach - 451.2 meters (1,480 feet). Skytree itself is much taller, but above this is just broadcast equipment.

Skytree casts a long shadow... this gives you an idea of how much taller it is than surrounding buildings.

Another photo of the Tokyo skyline - this may have been from the Tembo Deck. Tokyo is really amazing to see this way, it just never ends. The only thing that seems able to contain its spread is the ocean on one side. (I'm from New York, and I'm always amazed by the sheer physical size of Tokyo.)

After walking around the Galleria, all you can really do is head back down to the floors below. You go up from floor 350, but floors 345 and 340 have things like cafes, a restaurant, the gift shop and this straight-down glass floor. My wife was too scared to even stand on it. I may look like I'm hedging my bets a little in this photo, but I did fully stand on the glass panes afterwards.

We waited in line to take the elevator back down and then visited some of "Skytree Town", which is a brand new mall that has some really cool stuff in it... but also stuff like this:

That's apparently the history of canned food. Yeah, some of the things they have down there are kind of odd and ill-advised (and deserted), but others are amazing - there is one store I'm going to write a whole post about a little later, because it's completely ridiculous but totally awesome (and I'm not going to tell you what it is yet).

I did get this amazing ice cream:

That's milk flavored ice cream and a black sesame/charcoal cone. (Yes, it said "charcoal" on the menu). And it really tasted like all of those things; it was unique, and tasty. I don't remember the name of this place but it obviously had the number "63" in it, so if you go there, just look for that somewhere on the shop guide. I recommend this.

I also bought this really cool pen as a souvenir, which I have to show you in video form:

It has LED's in the base. But it is a working ballpoint pen too. Cost something like $15.

There are a huge number of souvenirs you can buy there, from the obligatory cookies in the shape of Skytree, to pens, keychains and other trinkets like this, to giant, highly detailed models (some of which are about 7 feet high when complete). It's fun to just browse and look at all the Skytree-related stuff people have dreamed up to try to make money off this place.

Flying ANA Business Class JFK-NRT - Japan 2013 trip report part 1

2013-04-21T00:53:00.001-04:00

Here it comes - the start of another Japan trip report! My wife and I usually fly one of the Japanese airlines whenever we go, but this was our first time trying out ANA's business class (a mileage award), so I figure that's a good place to start this report. I'll try not to be long-winded but this is still gonna be an epic post, with lots of pics. Anyone Googling in about ANA's staggered business class, this post is what you're looking for! Hopefully any of my semi-regular readers wondering how the other half lives on international flights will be interested too.

Outbound - from JFK
On this trip, my wife actually flew out a couple weeks ahead of me to visit her family, and I joined her later. So I was flying alone on the outbound leg. I was on flight 1009 from JFK-NRT - the new second daily ANA flight on this route, just upgraded to their "Inspiration of Japan" staggered business class layout. Pretty impressive - none of the US airlines even fly twice daily from NYC to Tokyo! ANA must be doing something right.

I arrived at terminal 7 about 3 hours early despite already having secured a window seat for myself - I just wanted to suck in all that business class had to offer. I naturally headed straight for the lounge - at JFK, ANA passengers use the British Airways lounge:

Much better than waiting at the gate! The lounge was nearly empty when I arrived, although it filled up fast. You'd think you'd be immune from screaming babies in a business/first class lounge, but think again. Shortly after I sat down, a family arrived with a tantrum-throwing toddler in tow, who promptly began smashing dinnerware onto the floor in between his screams.

My flight boarded on time. Stupidly I did not get a photo of the plane - boarding happened a little faster than I expected! I did get a photo of my seat for the next 14 1/2 hours:

When I boarded, several flight attendants were standing in the aisles waiting to greet business class passengers. I was surprised and happy when one of them greeted me with "Good evening, Mr. Williams". How did she know? I hadn't yet even made it to my seat! I guess she could have seen my boarding pass in my hand, but she still must have had the whole cabin memorized.

The window-window seats in this layout really can't be beat. You've got almost total privacy, plus aisle and window access. Of course, all seats have a large table area next to them, but which side that table's on alternates from row to row. In window-window rows ("window seat" actually by the window), you cannot really see anyone else on the plane.

This is the view of the cabin from one of these seats - I was holding the camera up, so normally I couldn't even see the top of that guy's head. Further to the right, you just see your partition, so you can't see anyone across the aisle.

Obligatory legroom shot. I was wondering about this because I've walked through this cabin on my way to economy many times now, and it never looks like there's much room. But you actually can stretch out all the way in that area underneath the foot of the bed there, and the neat thing is the foot of the bed acts as an ottoman when you're not using it as a bed. Like this:

It's actually very comfortable, because you have two ways you can stretch out - either put your feet up like that, or put them underneath. And when you're sitting (as opposed to laying down), you have basically unlimited legroom - not even Shaquille O'Neal would max it out.

ANA gives (I should say "loans") you a pair of Sony noise canceling headphones for the trip. They work quite well, although I haven't tried any others so I don't know how they compare to, say, Bose QC-15's. I can definitively say that compared to nothing, they're awesome. They really do cancel out a lot of the ambient noise in the plane, making it easier to hear movies or music and causing less fatigue. On the downside, they use a proprietary plug, so I wasn't able to use them to listen to my own music on my phone.

Here's a view you probably won't see for much longer at JFK - a BA 747-400 sitting at the gate. Actually there were four 747-400's parked almost right next to each other as we left - this one, plus two more BA's and a Qantas! I don't know how much longer you'll see four passenger 747's side by side anywhere - I wish I'd gotten a pic of that.

We left on time and had a powerful takeoff.

At this moment, we were flying almost directly above my house. This was just at 10,000 feet.

We took kind of a goofy route to divert around some storms. I am getting to be a little less nervous in the air than I used to be, but I'm still not happy when I see huge storms out the window. I didn't get any photos of the storms themselves, but you can see how dark the sky is behind us in this photo:

The sun never really sets when you're flying westbound on this route - so this was the view I had for about the next 10 hours.

It was time to sit back and enjoy the meal service!

The introduction to the multi-page menu. Everything has both a "Japanese" and "International" option - I knew I'd be eating plenty of Japanese food in Japan so I ordered everything International (also, my wife wasn't all that happy with the Japanese food on board). I actually screwed up and ordered something from the "From Japan" part of the menu (as opposed to the "From USA" that you're supposed to order from when flying out of JFK), but surprisingly they made it for me as best as they could.

Appetizer and champagne. Part of this was beef tartare. The glass bowl was mostly mushroom. I don't remember what the meat wrap actually was.

Second course. Since I ordered from the wrong part of the menu, I actually never did quite figure out what this was (and I forgot to look it up on the way back). Some sort of fish thing wrapped in a pastry of some sort - like a cold seafood Wellington. Plus prosciutto and melon and a small salad.

My steak. I ordered it with a red wine sauce; it wasn't supposed to come that way on this leg, but they did give it to me and they didn't even question it.

Ice cream dessert. I ate everything on all of my plates - it was actually pretty good, and not just "for airplane food". Don't listen to anybody that says it's impossible to serve good food on a plane - that's just what they tell economy class passengers to keep them (us) from complaining.

After dinner I sat back and watched both Lincoln and Looper on the AVOD system. I was a little disappointed that, while the screens are bigger than they are in economy, there's no difference in resolution. That actually makes everything obviously pixelated. On the plus side, they had a really good selection of movies this time, but I was too tired to watch more after my second.

ANA doesn't do a turn-down service in business but the seats go flat with the press of a button, so no big deal. I tried making my seat flat but at 6'4", I'm a little too tall to fully lie down (the bed seems to be about 6'2" - just barely too small for me). I managed to contort myself a bit to be comfortable enough to sleep, apparently, because when I next opened my eyes it was several hours later.

ANA's second meal is on demand - you just order it whenever you want, up to 2 hours before arrival. I decided to order mine near the cutoff, but the cabin was still darkened for sleepy time. (You can also order plenty of other things in between, like cheeseburgers, noodles, sandwiches, etc. and as much alcohol as you can keep down. You are never wanting for food or drink on ANA! Of course it's all free.)

Sorry about the lighting, but I had to use the reading light to take this photo (and eat!). I think this was a seafood and spinach lasagna. It was also really good - maybe even better than the steak, though the second meal is only a single course.

After one of the thankfully less eventful landings I've had at Narita, I snapped this photo of the cabin as I was de-planing. This is one of three business class cabins on this plane - there's one behind about this same size, and another in front that's tiny and very private. ANA really goes after the premium passengers on this route.

We got in at 9:08PM (according to Flightaware), which was on time but is a bit late for a scheduled flight into Narita. After clearing customs and baggage claim, it doesn't leave much time to get to Tokyo and your hotel before the transit system shuts down - but I made it.

Inbound - from NRT
Our return was on flight 1010 from NRT-JFK - also the later flight, but this one's actually a better schedule because it both leaves and arrives at around 4PM.

ANA actually has about five lounges around Narita Airport - this one's probably not one of the best, but it was near our gate (44). It's tastefully decorated and lit in a modern style, with good food options (including a noodle bar!), but it has the feel of a finished basement - it's pretty small, in kind of a dead area below the main gates, and has no windows.

I grabbed some sandwiches and a beer - after 10 days in Japan, you kind of get used to having beer at all hours of the day and being buzzed basically all the time, because that's what everybody does there. They have a beer dispensing machine in the lounge that pours a perfect glass of beer every single time, head and all. When I first poured this one, the head was just peaking over the top of the glass - all at the push of a single button! I was amazed.

At least I got a pic of the plane this time! Already hooked up to the tug before we even started boarding.

My wife's seat. All the window seats are singles so we sat in the middle (each middle row has two seats). It can still be hard to talk, because there's an immovable partition between the seats, plus a large table. You really need to lean to be heard.

I gave my wife the inside seat and took the outside aisle seat myself - the outside seat is the worse seat between the two, because you're not as protected and are right on the aisle where people can brush past you and where things like other passengers' reading lights can be more bothersome. So I definitely didn't feel as secluded on this flight as I did on the outbound.

On this flight I didn't have anyone greet me by name but I did have one of the flight attendants come over, lean down and introduce herself by name, and tell me to let her know if I needed anything during the flight. I love ANA flight attendants.

Here's something you don't often see on a Japanese airline - the seat belt sign came on during the meal service, and the flight attendants had to suspend it. Japanese airlines rarely, in my experience, turn on the seat belt sign in flight, so when they do - and especially during a meal service - it means they're expecting things to get rough. You can see that we were flying through storms on the monitor - that's the forward-looking camera showing dark clouds. Anyway, I was just counting the minutes until this was over.

Today's appetizer. A cheese/olive mixture, bread sticks and I think some kind of tofu thing on a zucchini slice. That part actually wasn't my favorite, but again I ate everything.

Second course. I believe that's a piece of cured beef wrapping something (I don't remember what), plus what looked and felt like a pickled radish slice over some kind of seafood salad, then asparagus and cucumber. The flight attendant explained what the sauce was but I actually didn't get it - it seemed something like hollandaise, though.

Steak again. It looks a bit different than the earlier flight but I actually ordered the same thing - this is what it's supposed to look like, because this is what's actually on the menu on this leg. That's mustard seed and a red wine sauce.

Special mention to the bread - it looks weird, but that green thing is a steamed bun with pesto. It was actually quite delicious.

Dessert, from Pierre Herme. I think I can honestly say I have never tasted anything more vanilla. It was almost too much vanilla. It was really good at the beginning, but by the end I was a bit overloaded on vanilla. It needed a raspberry sauce or something to go with it.

After dinner, I watched Skyfall (disappointing!) and then fell asleep again. I was surprised when I woke up to find that I'd been asleep for about six hours!

Literally as soon as I woke up, a flight attendant came over, knelt down and asked me if I'd slept well and then if I'd like anything to eat or drink. I was still in a stupor so I couldn't even think of how to answer those questions - all I could think of was how embarrassingly bad my breath must smell and this cute flight attendant was talking to me like 5 inches away from my face. What I said was "I just woke up", which was supposed to explain my indecisiveness (and my bad breath) but I think just made for kind of an awkward moment. Anyway I ended up ordering a Coke Zero from her, then later rang another flight attendant to order my second meal.

Eating in the dark again. This was actually really good - basically an open-faced ham sandwich with egg and more of that hollandaise sauce. Then more bread and this weird thing that's hard to see in the upper left of my tray consisting of a slow-boiled or poached egg (so the yoke is still runny) surrounded by a kind of chunky vegetable jell-o. That was really the only thing I ate on either flight that I came close to deciding that I simply didn't like, though I did eat all of it. The egg part was good; the vegetable jell-o just made it a little odd.

While I was eating, I fired up the IFE again to watch Life of Pi. By the time it finished, we were already descending.

The landing was not uneventful like at Narita - in fact I experienced the second go-around of my life on this flight. The weather seemed fine through most of our descent, and it was only when I saw that we were at 3,000 feet holding for the ILS and the cloud tops were still below us that I realized things might get a little hairy. Sure enough, we hadn't yet broken out of the clouds when the high-resolution in-flight map showed us literally on top of the airport, and at that point I felt the surge in power of a go-around.

On our second attempt, I felt a lot of power fluctuations and wind gusts as the flight map showed us nearing the ground, and I finally saw land at only about 100 feet. We had some pretty major gusts right before landing and ended up on one bogey before settling firmly down on the other. It was definitely a landing that got my heart racing, and when I listened to the ATC recordings on LiveATC later, I heard a lot of wind shear warnings and other airplanes that diverted to Newark at this same time. Outside at the airport as we waited for our taxi, it was definitely very windy and foggy.

Overall Experience

I normally hate flying, but it's amazing what just having things like lounge access, a good meal or a glass of champagne to look forward to can do. And being able to sleep properly during a long flight makes a huge difference in post-flight fatigue and jet lag. I actually looked forward to my flights this time. I really hope we can fly business class again soon - buying a ticket outright will probably always be too expensive for us, but I've learned that most people don't actually do that. There are plenty of ways to get a business class ticket besides buying it from the airline!

ANA Service
ANA's business class cabin offers a good amount of room, but it's pretty utilitarian in appearance. But it's that Japanese level of service that really elevates everything. There seems to be about one flight attendant for every two passengers, and they always seem to be around, anticipating your every need. I was so impressed when one of them knew my name before I even took my seat, and when another came over and introduced herself, and when another knelt down and asked me if I needed anything just after waking up (even if I was too out of it to answer properly). They are well trained even in seemingly small details like posture - whereas a western flight attendant will loom over you from above, a Japanese flight attendant will kneel down slightly below and look up to you to talk, making it clear that they are there to serve you.

At the same time, it's also clear that they're in charge. It was interesting watching one of our flight attendants dealing with a drunk passenger who had trouble even mustering the strength to eat. When she placed his entree, she said "please enjoy your meal", and it sounded like a simple closing pleasantry. When he didn't eat, she came back a second time and said "please enjoy your meal" one more time, as if he hadn't heard or noticed before. When he still didn't eat, she came back again, looked at him in the eyes, waved at his food and said "please enjoy your meal" more sternly a third time. This time I realized it was not just a pleasantry, it was actually a command to eat. She wanted to clean up and check off that she'd fed him. This is the Japanese way - everything sounds very nice, but in actual fact you are being directed in ways that you may not even realize.

Gotta admit, we had some pretty cute flight attendants this time too! That never hurts.

Japan 2013 - the Preview

2013-03-29T17:38:00.003-04:00

It's about that time again - in two weeks, I'll be heading back to Japan for my yearly trip to the country that's become like an adopted second home for me. Steel yourselves for another trip report!

I complained a little about this last time but after 13 years, it's becoming increasingly difficult to find new things to do in Tokyo. So this year's plans will also take my wife and I somewhere I've never been before.

Also, this will be my first time flying modern business class:

That's ANA's staggered business class (on a 787, but the 777 seats look the same). The only other time I've flown business class was on my second ever trip to Japan way back in 2000, when United upgraded me because I'm tall and I asked. Back then, though, business class was basically just a wider seat and more legroom, so it wasn't that great - I was seated in an exit row by the flight attendants, and it really wasn't much different than the exit rows I usually get in economy. On a side note, this was also the most turbulent flight of my life - I'm an experienced flier, but I nearly found religion on that flight. So it was hard to enjoy the business class benefits.

But this is different - just look at the menu, for one thing! And everyone gets their own little pod now, in 4 abreast seating. And of course, a flat bed. We booked this entirely on AMEX points and miles, so we just needed to pay the tax (which admittedly was still a lot - but less than half what an economy ticket costs). For once, I'm actually excited about my flight.

We still don't have a lot of concrete plans but some things we (well, I) am hoping to do:

I tried unsuccessfully to get tickets to see AKB48 last year, but Maeda Atsuko (one of the most popular members, kneeling right in front above) quit right in the middle of our trip - this was literally the top story on the news for the entire last week we were there. So I'm hoping their popularity has waned enough without her that we can get in. From what I've read, this is a uniquely Japanese experience, so I'm actually really hoping we win tickets.

There is literally no other music-related event that I'm interested in happening in the ten days I'll be in Japan, so it's AKB48 or bust.

Completely switching gears, although it still fits in with my otakudom:

Just like St. Maarten is one of the only places on Earth where you can actually be blown into the water by jet blast from departing commercial aircraft, Tokyo is one of the only places where you can actually tour a commercial airplane maintenance facility. Apparently you can get right up to the planes and almost touch them as they're being worked on. Just imagine this in the ultra-paranoid post-9/11 United States - you'd probably be arrested and thrown in a gulag just for suggesting it.

This is already booked. One of the few things we've gotten confirmed so far.

And since we've never been, we figured we may as well finally see this:

That's the Tsukiji fish market, probably the most famous fish market in the world. Restaurants in New York now even ship stuff from there and brag about it right on the menu - it's almost gotten to be like Kobe beef was in the early days (before the whole "Kobe style" thing started, and it became impossible again to find real Kobe beef here).

Other than that, I have a feeling Tokyo's going to be a lot of shopping - music, musical instruments and maybe some things my wife wants too :)

But then! We're going to Okinawa.

We're staying at the Kafuu Resort Fuchaku Condo Hotel, which has pretty excellent reviews everywhere and was really reasonably priced all things considered (I think we are paying about $160 per night, which is much less than most resorts there). It also has absolutely enormous rooms, because they're not really hotel rooms, they are one-bedroom condos:

That's just the living room. To the right is apparently the bedroom, to the left is the kitchen.

I hope this place is really as good as it looks, but I've developed a reputation (among... my wife) as a highly skilled hotel picker, and there always seems to be one place that jumps off the page whenever I'm searching - one hotel that not only has some of the best amenities, but is also cheaper than even budget motels. If I don't see that the first time I look, I just keep trying - eventually, some otherwise expensive hotel has some crazy rate that feels like winning the lottery.

I don't know much about Okinawa other than that there was a pretty terrible battle there and the weather's supposed to be nice most of the time. Oh, and the locals really don't like the federal government much. It sounds kinda like if Hawaii and Texas had a love child in the Pacific.

By the way, we are flying Japan Airlines "Class J" there:

Also all on miles - no cost at all! We're becoming quite the seasoned travelers, knowing all the little tricks.

Anyway, watch for my trip report next month! I'm sure we'll find more stuff to do.