June Birthdays 
So, Ferenc made me aware that a hip area of Tokyo called Shibuya has many guitar stores, and he sent me a map to help me find them. I ended up going to four altogether. Here's what I saw (decided to make the photos big so you can see all the prices and the details on the guitars - hope that's OK. $1 = 110 Yen).
Here's what Shibuya looks like - it's nuts. Enough neon for ya??
My favorite store was Ishibashi, which had a ton of Fender stuff. Here's two photos that'll make the hearts of some of you flutter 
:
This one is all vintage Fenders, tons of Mustangs, couple of Jags, a few seventies Strats and Teles, blackface Tremolux, brownface Pro:
Here's one of the high-end vintage stuff, behind the glass:
Here are two photos of new Fender stuff, all US-made, mostly Custom Shop and some signature models:
I played an awesome white '60 Custom Shop Strat through that blackface Vibrolux Reverb for a while. What an amazing guitar. Really liked that one.
The Japanese are producing tons of great Fender guitars, too. I picked up a Fender Japan catalog that is very cool. They have many variations of their '62-reissue, featuring different US-made pickups, Fender Vintage, Texas Specials, DiMarzio Vintage, Lace Sensors, etc. It looks like they figured out that they can't make good pickups, have given up, and now use American pickups for all Japan-made Fenders! Pretty neat.
It was also interesting to see that there are a lot of Fender knock-offs. much more than in the US, and many brands I never heard of - and they all have a Ritchie Blackmore model (blonde, rosewood neck, big headstock, white pickguard, black pickup covers and knobs)! Fender Japan has one, too, though it doesn't have his name on it. I guess the guy is pretty big there.
The vintage prices, as you can see, are pretty outrageous, but that is to be expected, I guess. However, roughly $2100 for a late-seventies master-volume silverface Twin Reverb - no way! I was surprised to see no Mosrites or Mosrite knock-offs in any of the shops. Also, no Yamaha guitars in any of these shops (the Yamaha store was sadly closed when I went to visit it).
Enjoy!
Ivan
Ivan
Lords of Atlantis on Facebook
The Madeira Official Website
The Madeira on Facebook
The Blair-Pongracic Band on Facebook
The Space Cossacks on Facebook
The Madeira Channel on YouTube
Wow, this looks like a cool lil' store, thanks for posting. Ivan you lucky dog 
Hey what's the black lookin' string going through some of the guitars? A security thing maybe?
