Down and Out

Well, I made it back from Tokyo, barely. The first 48 hours were great, then I came down with the mystery illness. I've spent the last few days huddled up with a 101 degree fever coupled with intense stomach pain. Today is the first day I have felt somewhat normal, and I'll be back to work tomorrow. I figured it was the flu, but the doctor tested me and it was negative. His best guess was that I may have eaten something in Tokyo that was messing with my insides. Oddly I have only had stomach pain, no vomiting or other nasty stuff coming out of me. Not really concerned what it is at this point, as long as it's gone. So, without further ado, not that I have mustered the energy and focus to blog, let have the weekend in review.

We got to Tokyo around 11 p.m. on Friday night, and just settled in and didn't do much. We stayed at an apartment that our school owns, which faculty and our families are welcome to use. It's a major hook-up as it's right in the gut of Tokyo, close to everything.

I was up early on Saturday morning, as it was my one and only day of guitar shopping. I arrived in Ochanomizu, the unsurpassed guitar district of Tokyo at 9:30 a.m., only to find that none of the shops were open yet!! So I chilled out and had some breakfast while going over my mental checklist of what I wanted to play. We'll discuss the happy ending of my guitar shopping expedition in a moment.

I alway go to Tower Records in Shibuya (a trendy, lively part Tokyo) whenever I'm in Tokyo because they have a great English bookstore on the top floor. I mentioned before that last week Chieko and I went to see Calexico and Iron & Wine (Shades, there from South Carolina if you are reading...heard of them?), but I never mentioned it again. Well, it was one of the best, most intimate concerts I've ever been too. There weren't more than 100 people there, and we sat 2 feet from the stage. I was able to observe everything Iron & Wine frontman Sam Beam was doing to his guitar, which was awesome because I really admire his playing style. Chieko was also way into both bands, even though it was the first time she'd heard either of them. So you can imagine we were mutually pumped up when we arrived at Tower Records on Sunday to see that Iron & Wine were playing a free mini-concert in just a few hours time. Of course we hung out, and mooched some autographs afterwords. I was pretty nervous, as this was the first time I'd met someone semi-famous who I really admire. So I gushed for about 30 seconds and then ran away, my heart pounding. I then proceeded to question why I was such a pussy for the next hour or so. In this incarnation, Iron & Wine consisted of Sam Beam and his sister Sarah, who harmonize really beautifully and have a cool dynamic going with each other. So, twice in one week I got to see a band that I really dig, in a really small setting. Very nice. This is the famously chaotic traffic crossing outside Shibuya station, where hundreds of people amass on several different corners, then all rush towards the middle when the 'walk' light comes on. If you've seen 'Lost in Translation' then you've seen this crossing.

This was the view from one of the places we checked out for our wedding ceremony. It was pretty sweet; that's the Imperial Palace grounds in the foreground, with the metropolis of Shinjuku (the heart of Tokyo) in the background. The restaurant was one the 36th floor.

And now the good stuff. I am the happy new owner of a 2006 Gibson Advanced Jumbo. It's a bad, bad, bad guitar.

Which happens to look a lot like my Gibson J-45. But I assure you, these are very different machines.

In recognition of the fact that the majority of my readers neither play guitar nor care about guitars, I won't get into the specifics, but I'm really looking forward to learning how different these two guitars are from one another, and seeing what I can do differently with the new AJ. Sadly, since I got sick the day after I bought the thing (still waiting for Chieko to reimburse me, since this is a wedding present!) I haven't had much of a chance to play it, other than the few hours I put in when test playing it before I pulled the trigger. It was a great experience for me though because I went shopping alone and did all my negotiating in Japanese, which made me feel good :-)

On the wedding front, we tried about 10 different places, mostly French. They were all good, though I'd like to know which one gave me this dandy stomach virus. The food was great, though I have to say eating full course French meals two or three times a day, amazingly, gets a bit tedious after a few days. Especially given that we usually have to sit through an hour sales pitch before we actually get to eat. They usually go something like this: for the first 20 minutes we (Chieko, the wedding planner, and myself) go over what we are looking for in our ceremony, how many people, etc...the next 20 minutes, they (Chieko and the wedding planner) start talking about stuff that I can't really understand, but I still try and follow...the next 20 minutes, I become very involved with biting my fingernails, and neither Chieko nor the wedding planner seem to notice that I'm there anymore...finally, I'm snapped back to reality with the mention of food, and we finally get to eat a fancy meal, during which Chieko fills me in on what I missed...so now we have about a week to decide which, if any, of the places we checked, we'd like to use for our wedding...decisions decisions.

So, I'm in bed for what seems like the 100th day in a row, and I'm ready to not be in bed anymore. It's very dark and snowy outside though, so I suppose if ever there was a day to be cooped up, today would be it. We're really close to being finished with the term, though I've probably extended my term by a week or so by cancelling classes for the last two days. Need to buy some plane tickets back to the states! OK, back to recuperation for me.