house tour, which took place in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya. Friedman was featured on Jukebox, a television program in which Friedman and two Japanese people translate the lyrics of various English songs into understandable Japanese. He has also made guest appearances on the television programs Eigo de Shabera Night and Tamori Club. In 2008, Friedman played the role of Paul Weinberg, an English language teacher, in Isshin Inudou's Gou-Gou Datte Neko de Aru. Friedman was a guest star in the Adult Swim original Metalocalypse by playing driving teacher Mr. Gojira. He has appeared on Cool Japan several times as a music expert. In 2009, Friedman appeared on The Quiz Show, a Japanese TV drama starring Sho Sakurai as a guest professor. In January 2014, Friedman took part in New Japan Pro-Wrestling's Wrestle Kingdom 8 in Tokyo Dome event, playing Hiroshi Tanahashi to the arena. Personal life Friedman is of Jewish descent. He lives in the Shinjuku neighborhood of Tokyo. Shortly after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Friedman began auctioning off a great variety of his musical equipment and paraphernalia that he used as a member of Megadeth and Cacophony, including some of the earliest productions of Jackson Kelly guitars and his signature Carvin V220. In December 2012, Friedman married Japanese cellist Hiyori Okuda in Yokohama. In 2018, Friedman confirmed that his hair is genuinely curly but hates it; he prefers to have it straight. Guitar technique Friedman is known for his improvisation and for fusing Eastern music with Western music and other styles, such as neoclassical, thrash metal and later progressive rock. When playing, he often uses arpeggiated chords and various customized scales and arpeggios, some of which relate to Asian (Chinese and Japanese), Middle Eastern and other exotic scales, which are different from the typical minor/major pentatonic and seven modes based on the Major scale. As a right-handed guitarist, Friedman has an unorthodox picking technique; the angle in which his hand is clenched goes against the conventional palm mute frequently used by right-handed players in metal music. He also frequently utilizes upstrokes as opposed to downstrokes, especially on the B and high E strings. Rather than strictly picking from his elbow or wrist, Friedman will also pick moving his fingers—a technique known as "circle picking". Friedman is critical of being called a shredder. He opined that the term is "a guy who plays fast meaningless shit all the