Monday, January 23, 2017

Record Store Visit: Disc Union Nakano - Tokyo, Japan - 12/28/16

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Sorry for such a long delay since the last time I posted anything.  As I had mentioned, I went to Tokyo over New Years and then when I got home, I ended up pretty sick for about 2 weeks.  I'm still kind of pulling out of it, but I'l at least well enough to start up a little writing about my trip.  So, if I were to exclusively write about the record stores and records I bought while in Tokyo, I would probably fill up the next 4-6 months of this website with that.  To keep things a little more varied, I'm going to mix these purchases in with some of the more current albums that I'm buying this year. 

I went to a fair amount of record stores while in Tokyo.  Especially thanks to the wonderful Kazu from Waterslide records who brought me around to the very best ones for the type of records I was shopping for.  Over the weeks I'll be writing a little bit about each store, though as a warning quite a few of them were Disc Unions.  Still even most of the Disc Unions had their own personality.  It really was an amazing trip and even though I've heard my entire life how great record stores are in Japan, even I couldn't believe how incredible they were once I was actually there.

First up is the first record store I visited in Tokyo, the Disc Union in Nakano.  This was the first full day we were in Tokyo and I will admit that I was a little tired when we were walking around.  We tried to cram in a lot this day and we ended up at this shop after some time walking around Akihabara and then the Nakano Broadway building.  I think if I had gone to this shop a little later in the week, I probably would have done some deeper digging, but even in the limited time I was here, I checked out a good amount of stuff.

Unlike some of the more specialized Disc Unions, the one in Nakano was a store that had a pretty
broad focus and carried records from most genres.  Like most of the stores we went to, there was definitely more of a focus on CDs than vinyl, but their vinyl section was still quite big, very impressive and organized to perfection.  One of my favorite things about record stores in Japan is how specifically they divide the sub genres of each section.  Being able to head right to the used Japanese punk section sure made things convenient throughout the trip.

This store was a pretty good size, taking up the second floor of a decently large building.  We were there at about 3 in the afternoon on a Wednesday and the store was just full of people.  It was very rare that any record store we went to wasn't pretty packed with folks buying records.  Warms my heart.

Anyway, this was a really good store, though not at the top of my list at the end of the day.  I only ended up buying a Practice/What-A-Night's split 7", but again, had we gone back on a different day where we were a little more rested, I think I would have had the energy to dig a little longer at this store.  I'm sure I would have unearthed some sort of hidden treasures.

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