Record shopping, with a twist

Making the most of the last few days of my holidays, and deciding to brave the overbearing heat, I went off on a long overdue record shopping trip yesterday. I’ve been planning said trip for a while, having had to dig quite deep online to find some useful resources for record shops in English, but haven’t had the time to really do it properly yet.

Tokyo, and Japan to an extent, is a real haven for music fans and collectors. While most other countries seem to be quickly suffering from the increase in availability of digital formats, with physical sales suffering accordingly, Japan still has a strong market for physical sales – and not just new releases, but especially second hand releases. Second hand CDs and records (as well as tapes in some places) abound in Japan – they’re everywhere, and there’s a shit loads of them.

With regards to vinyl, Japan has long been known as a bit of a haven for DJs and collectors – Japanese only releases and re-issues always compete for high prices in the west, and when you’re here it’s quite easy to complete your collections. All you have to do is roll down to places like Shibuya and Shinjuku, which according to the lists I’ve found online collectively hold in excess of 80 vinyl shops, which is impressive to say the least. From new releases to classics and oldies, if you’re looking for it, chances are you’ll find in Tokyo, and with a bit of luck for dirt cheap too (and if it’s not cheap the current exchange rate should prove more than favourable).

Personally not having my decks with me has meant that I want to stay away from shopping for stuff I’d like to own for my own collection, primarily because of space and not really being able to use the record beyond listening to it. I will do at some point but I got to watch my money and space. So instead I came here with another idea in mind – to start digging for obscure Japanese records. An idea which then developed into digging for video game records and anime records. My mate showed me some vinyl he’d found in a few shops, including some crazy soundtrack for Dragon Quest featuring amazing artwork from Toriyama and a vinyl full of all the sound effects from the game. That tipped me over and I started to look into this a bit deeper – unfortunately realising that while there are some video games vinyl in Japan, there don’t seem to be enough of them to warrant sections in shops, and they generally get bundled with TV and Anime vinyl. Which logically led to me developing an interest in Anime vinyl – I’m a bit of Anime fanboy after all.

And so I started to look for record shops which would stock this kind of thing – which meant primarily looking for second hand shops and the more different kind of shop. If I can in a shop that stocks new releases, my wallet will hate me (not that it likes me going into second hand shops much either). Not only would I be able to find Anime and video game vinyl, I could also indulge my liking for random records, which I like to pillage for samples. And with Japanese traditional music being so prone to such pillaging I was bound to find somethings of interest.

Most of the interesting record shops are outside of central Tokyo it seems, which creates problems in terms of getting around. I could use buses I guess but I’ve not had the best experiences with them so far, so instead I decided to stick to train lines and focus on shops located on the same lines. First stop being the Chuo line, with Koenji and Nakano both offering a wide selection of second hand shops which on paper sounded more than interesting.

Koenji was the first stop and I ended up spending 3 hours there, including the first 40 mins looking for the first shop. You see Tokyo has two things going against the avid, uninitiated shopper: first most shops in Tokyo aren’t on the ground floor and they don’t have signs or fronts which help in identifying them. No like most things in Tokyo, they’re in buildings, generally a few floors up and they look totally inauspicuous – aka they’re just a flat turned into a shop. Which is ok as I’ve started getting used to this since being here, don’t look on the ground, always look up for what you want. Still it makes the whole shopping experience pretty surreal. Having to walk into a building and take an elevator to come out on a non-descript floor and basically go knocking or entering a flat, which turns out to be a shop, is in itself pretty bugged I reckon. The second thing that goes against helping you is the lack of a proper address system – Japan has no street names, opting instead for a numerical system which doesn’t make much sense to a non-Japanese. There aren’t any building or house numbers as such, just block and area numbers and they don’t follow each other… nice :neutral:

Anyways baring that in mind I set off to look for Manual of Errors, a shop billed as selling ‘interesting and unusual records’ as well as some crazy music making toys. I did find it after a while, it had moved to a new address and unfortunately had stopped stocking toys and it seems unusual records, as the bulk of the records on offer were South American. Not something I’m madly interested in, or have the money for. Still pretty nice flat they’ve got going.

Looking for Manual of Errors I stumbled across another shop which wasn’t on my list. Another flat in a non-descript building, I went back there and found a serious amount of interesting vinyl for bargain prices. And the owner was really nice and helped me find the location of the other two stores I was looking for. I recommend them – it’s called Franklin and is about 5 mins from the station.

My next stop was Godzilla-ya, a toy shop which stocks vinyl – surely I’d find some interesting anime/video game pieces there. Not this time, the shop’s closed tuesday and wednesday ad: . Ah well, I headed off to look for the last shop, Rare records, a chain of second hand shops not too dissimilar to Music & Video exchange in England. I found the Koenji cosily located under the train tracks in an open shopping area where the shop was squeezed between a clothes store and a shoemaker – pretty surreal. Again the selection was pretty good, with an incredible amount of variety and some ridiculously cheap prices. And their CD stock is pretty big too.

I ended up in Nakano next but took the wrong turn looking for a giant second hand CD store and so instead ended up at another Rare records shop. Which was more of the same, and I found some pretty interesting pieces there too including a sounds of war vinyl (which turned out to not be what I was expecting, shame) and some traditional Japanese LPs.

In the end I didn’t get much luck on the video game LPs front, but I’m far from giving up. I did pick up some great Anime bits (including some Yamato LPs which have some amazing synths) as well as some hip hop LPs which were too cheap to pass, ha ha I’m a sucker.

So that was round one of my record finding missions, round two is likely to be Shimo Kitazawa which is apparently ripe full of shops and then at some point I’m going to have to do Shinjuku properly – with around 50 shops alone, the place is bound to hold some gems.

If you want to go record shopping in Tokyo for more alternative things, second hand etc… I recommend checking the following sites, which I’ve found useful though some of the info is outdated and I haven’t found any newer sites.
Metrolpolis record store feature
Tokyo soundings
Tokyo stores list

But if you’re really serious about your shopping, than the best investment would the 07/08 shopping guide, available in most bookshops and record shops. At 2000 yen it’s a bargain and contains a full list of all shops in Japan and much more. I’m definitely copping it for the next journey.

Beyond my own personal enjoyment and pleasure, my search for records is also to do with an ongoing project which I want to start soon – more details when they’re ready, but if you like music and the more random and out there stuff than you’ll probably be interested in checking it out.

Oh yeah and of course I took a bunch of pictures, I’ll be updating this set everytime I go record shopping so keep checking it:
Tokyo Record shops Flickr set