Meeting the real violin

January 2005
1 or 2 months after I got electric violin, I was getting impatient to have "real" violin which is made of wood. Because thinking about the system of making sound between electric and wooden violin is completely different. And to get good proper skill of playing needs absolutely wooden violin, I thought like this.
(Actuary, the difficulty of playing wooden violin can not be compared to one of electric violin. Wooden violin requires much more care and proper bowing)

Anyway, I really wanted to have real wooden violin. But as I mentioned before, there was no instrument shop in "my town".
So again I had to look for a violin on the inter-net auction.


And I found this. When I found this violin, its price was really low, 100$. So I placed a bid, and kept watching. Because look, this violin's beautiful tiger flames in the back side. It's like a flame of fire or something really beautiful thing I can't explain well.


Anyway its beauty completely caught me(who is completely beginner). Since I had no knowledge about wooden violin, I thought "Waoh, this is the one which I was looking for...". This guy is So easy.

At the last day of the auction, I was sticking in front of computer looking the same page for a long while.
1 hour before the ending, its price went up to 250$.
I placed bid more, and it became 350$. Yes! I'm the highest bidder now! 10 minutes before ending, it went up to 450$.
Oh, no! Who is bidding so much! I won't lose this one.
How about 500$! Yes!
Oh, no! Again?! Merde!
...
...
Finaly, I got this violin. The final price was... 670$!!
I had decided my budget should be about 400$, but the result was... It went up much higher than my budget. But I was not regretting at all. I was satisfied with the result which I got the real wooden violin.

Thinking about this now, I'm pretty sure about that I was completely fished by the seller. Because my auction competitor was new ID guy who has no auction feed back yet. (At that time, in Japanese net-auction people could get new ID and place a
bid so easily. Now it's impossible though.)

Anyway, this is the first meeting with real violin for me. This violin gave me a huge turning point in my life. And she went to even France with me later, I took her so many places where I went. This is big memory of mine.