Spend the past 4 weeks in Japan and this is what I got.
As the title says, I spend the past 4 weeks travelling around Japan with my family for our summer holiday.
It was my first time there and a friend warned me about the insane prices there.
I’ve spend the first half of the year making a list of record shops I wanted to visit. Some were good others were great but overall I just really enjoyed going trough the bins.
I bought a couple of new records which in Europe are easily 2 or 3 times more expensive. Most of the stuff I purchased was used though and all were in great condition.
I started in Osaka where I hit up a load of shops with my absolute favourite being Jazz Records Seeed, super friendly owner and nice selection of records. I remember not buying a lot here but the atmosphere was great and the owner gave me some good tips for other records which shops to visit.
Next I did a day trip to Nara and on the way back hit up Mole Music which really ended up being my favourite shop of the trip! They do a lot of house and electronic but the owner loves spiritual and free jazz so naturally he had a pretty good selection of jazz aswell. It’s here that I found an OG pressing of William Hooker - … Is Eternal Life. The owner was said to see it go and gave it a little wave goodbye.
After this I travelled to Hiroshima and stayed at a small hotel called Good Sleep, the owner Yuka has her own record/listening bar in the hotel and it was amazing to listen to records with her as we had a beer and talked about records. She gave me a load of shops to visit in Hiroshima and my favourite shop here was Groovin Record Station. They have really really good prices and also have a shop in Fukuoka and Okayama.
In Fukuoka I bought a couple records again at Groovin where I found the 1979 Japan pressing of Midnight Sun by Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio and also found two Fela Kuti records and Gil Scott-Heron - Don’t Give Up at Face Records.
Then the last leg of the trip was 10 days Tokyo. I had so many records already so my daughter made me promise her to only by records if they were really special! (aren’t they all 😅🤣)
To keep the promise I just tried to avoid record shops in general but I did visit a couple. The prices in HMV and Tower records were outrageous and the condition of the records were also worse compared to the other places I visited for the prices they were asking. I did end up buying an OG press of Mint Jams at Flash Disc Ranch. They had two copies the OG promo press which was a very dark brown and if held to the light you could see it was lightly translucent but I left that one cause the records was lightly bent. So if you after an OG Mint Jams go to Flash Disc Ranch!
Sorry for the long post! I really enjoyed visiting record shops in Japan and if you are planning a trip I highly recommend the smaller cities and the smaller local shops as opposed to the HMV’s and Tower Records. The digging is more fun, the staff and owners of the shops are super friendly and happy to have you over and I think the prices are also better.