Thursday 30 December 2010

KitKat Guitars

Wow. Slept in till 2:30pm. Nice.

I usually put it off until the very last minute, but I decided to pay my extortion money NHI today. At the combini I also bought this Nestle mug pack. It was only 250 yen! I thought it was some kind of end-of-year gift thing, but it looks like it's an encouragement promotion for students about to do their entrance exams early next year. Anyway, can't argue with getting an (almost free) mug and coffee with a kit-kat.

After a very quick stint in Shinjuku, we went to Ochanomizu. Yes, guitar heaven so to speak.

I saw this clear plexiglass Les Paul copy and really wanted it. Why? The whole guitar is plexiglass, including the neck and headstock! Unfortunately, they said it was already sold, so boo hoo to me. Apparently it's a no name guitar, but for the 60,000 yen they wanted I think I would've bought it.

Later on in the day I saw the Ibanez Jem20th for 398,000 yen. No, they wouldn't let me play it. No sale to you buddy!

I tried out this Fender Splattercaster today. They want 54,800 yen for it. This is like the blue one I saw last year in Ikebukuro. Like that one, this one sounded nice too. I haven't decided whether it's ugly or beautiful. But do I need it?

I have so many now, you'd think I bought them as investments. WAY back in 1994, while we were trying to make it big *cough* in Sydney, I saw a Fender Custom Shop Playboy Stratocaster. T'was quite a shock when I saw one here. Shame they're asking 1,280,000 yen for it! Told my mamma I'm going to buy it, for a joke. She didn't get it. Anyways..

Before we left I bidded 21,000 yen on an desktop Evolver synth. I got outbid. There was one in the store so I tried it out. The unit doesn't have a headphone out so I was listening to it through only one of the speaker outs. I didn't get a good listen, but it sounded like the demos I've heard on Youtube.

Also there was a Korg MS2000. It has a lot of useable sounds here too. I didn't buy them. It's nice to be able to try these things out. I did notice a Roland Juno 106 synth. One thing I LOVE about Japan is all that yesterday gear stuff isn't that hard to come across, and all those sweet, sweet guitars are here too. Why would I want to leave?

2 comments:

Limo said...

An interesting read here..

http://www.snopes.com/luck/kitkat.asp

Jimmy In Japan said...

Yeah I was informed about that connection - "kitto katsu" : Win without fail. Kind of clever. Handy tie-in to market to those students!

Companies are working out how to cash in on Valentine's Day now (and *cough* White Day).