I'm going to stay with my cousin in japan next week wondered if anyone could recommend good digging spots, bar, restuarants etc in tokyo, kyoto, hiroshirma and nara? Cheers

Man, jealousy.... I wanna go there so bad.. and not just cos i think japanese girls are so hot.. ok mostly.

Sorry I have no tips, Ive only been once when I was a kid, so I didnt really get to plan anything myself, or appreciate fine food/records/etc

electronics,toys,drum machines operating on a japanese os.
they come up with the strangest things.
japanese jazz amuse me.
ohhhh..45's! yiyi!! bambalupmamey
enjoi your trip
chyeauh

Hey man I've been living here in Tokyo for 8 years. Records can be insanely expensive. There's tons of record shops but those little shops tend to be overpriced- the biggest chain is Disk Union. They seem to have reasonable prices and you can listen to the records there (most places don't allow that - and forget about bringing a record player). Disk Unions are all over japan- Shibuya has some good ones and the center is in Shinjuku - There's 4 or 5 of them with different specialties. There's also a lot of record shops in Shimokitazawa. When you go into the smaller shops there's a book that has all of the record shops in Tokyo with maps but I can't remember the name of it now... Tons of small vendors so look up the katakana for records (レコード） and look up at the signs- they're all over. Expect to pay at least 3x what you pay in the states. If you have the money you'll find records that you'd never ever see in the states. Soundtracks for anime tend to be cheap and some are cool but most are crap... Boogie still's cheap out here... other than that do some web searches for shops. Good luck!

Cheers for the advice, Found disk union in shibuya yesterday, its immense, didn't have time to look on all the floors. I checked out the jazz and funk in the basement, there was so much stuff i'd never seen before. i thought some of the used stuff was reasonably priced, between 500 and 800 yen, considering a large beer is 550 yen some places. I'm gonna keep exploringa and let you know what else i find

agreed the girls are amazing!! their wearing knee socks and short skirts helps too

Never been to Japan, hope to one day.

If you´re looking for gear though, there´s always Ishibashi (used section always has good stuff).

So if u can find it, when you're in tokyo, go to koenji. Quite a few record stores. Some are reasonable, some aren't. Plus koenji has loads of 2nd hand stores with all kinds of cool shit. slightly americana in places but thats the trend here lately.

That's dope ! I hope I can go to Japan some day. have fun !

If any of you go to Japan in the future... be sure to check out Nujabes' record store.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot0N-iXrWmg

RIP

Just got back from 3 weeks in Japan (plus 4 days in Hong Kong & 6 in Taiwan, both had no record shops). Got in some awesome digging, bought about 40 records, had to post a bunch back home... Stoked!

On the whole, 2nd hand seems to be the way to go when digging. First hand is super expensive (from what I saw), about double the price of digging in Australia.

The best two shops I found were in Ikebukero (stock's in great condition, huge variety & loads of stock for less than ¥1000/$12.50), but I can't read any Japanese so I can't give you the shop's name & a joint in Hiroshima called Stereo Records (here they are). Stereo Recs can get a bit expensive (most stock goes for about ¥2000), but they do have some good stuff in the ¥300 bins (just under $4).

Also made it to the Disc Unions in Shibuya... Best specialist digs around. Tower Records in Kanazawa had good J-pop/J-rock/Enka selections and a decent set of western CDs was a bit expensive. Staff were super handy, they helped my girlfriend dig for 70s enka/soul crossover CDs!

Dodge anywhere that has signs advertising CDs, DVDs & comics. The stock there tends to be lame. Oh yeah, if you know the katakana & hiragana alphabets you'll do way better at digging in the mainstream shops. They tend to arrange everything alphabetically rather than by specific genre (no rock/soul/pop/folk etc divisions).

Hope this Google maps rip helps for anyone going to the Ikebukero joint: