Guest Column: Record Shopping in Japan

In a comment last week one of our loyal readers asked if he could write a guest column about his experiences buying vinyl in Japan. So without further ado, we offer:

Record Shopping in Japan
By Mike Falcon

For most of my adult life I have been very interested in Japanese culture.  I love their movies, art, food, culture, and overall aesthetics.  I studied Japanese while in college as my obligatory foreign language and have traveled there a few times.  Something I have found very interesting about Japan is how they appreciate American and Western culture.  Japan is very different from America or Europe but as a society they have a very deep appreciation for key things from these cultures.  It was so amazing to me to eat various Western foods in Japan and find that the Japanese do Italian, French, Brazilian, and Spanish food more authentically than is available in the U.S.  I ate in a small Italian restaurant where the chef took pride in his Italian food on a level I think could only be found in Italy itself.  For me the Japanese appreciation of Western culture is most evident in three of “my favorite things:” Jazz, vinyl and baseball.   I will save you from my interesting and wonderful experiences with Japanese baseball and other observations because this in an article about vinyl hunting.

The Japanese, relative to the U.S., have a lot of record and CD stores.   I don’t believe they have suffered the same setbacks as the American record industries have, as the music store business seems much healthier.  In Tokyo you can find corporate-owned music and DVD stores eight stories tall that would take a day or more to explore.  These places were interesting but I found the small record stores

much more impressive.  There are specialty stores of all types. I found many techno and dance stores.  Then there are places like the first place I want to talk about, Disk Union.

Disk Union, in my experience, was a unique type of record store.  In fact it was not one store but 10 or more (I never could figure out exactly how many) scattered all over Tokyo.  Each store caters to a different genre and most of them are in the Shibuya district scattered over a few blocks on different floors of buildings.  In Tokyo, real estate is absurdly expensive.  Coming from Louisiana where New York and San Francisco real estate prices seem absurd, Tokyo is shocking.  A place the size of Amoeba Records in San Francisco just doesn’t seemed possible for an independent chain in Tokyo.  That’s why Disk Union is separated into multiple stores.  I first explored the Disk Union Jazz CD store, where used and new CDs were on separate floors.  I would say that 80 percent of the stock was American jazz and I noticed very little rare that I would want, the exceptions being the Japanese re-presses (the famous mini-lp sleeves) of a few CDs that are out of print in the U.S.  The only CDs I brought back from Japan where a copy of Rob Schimmer’s “Theremin Noir” which I had read a review of when it first came out but had never purchased before it went out of print (I haven’t enjoyed this disc that much, a case of the idea sounds cooler than the execution).  The other was a mini-lp sleeve edition of Lawrence Marable’s “Tenorman”.  I had seen the record go for very high prices but had never heard it.  It is currently out of print in the U.S. and I just figured I would grab it (one of the better decisions I’ve made, this album is unbelievable).  They were both around $10 used*.

Tokyo is the most difficult city to navigate I’ve ever traveled and finding these stores from a map was a pain but I found and went to four different stores, the last of which was the Disk Union that sold jazz vinyl.  I saved it for last because I knew I would spend the bulk of my time there.  The selection was pretty impressive, not on the level of the Jazz Record Center (my gold standard) in NYC but nice.  They would break out some of the bigger labels into their own sections.  I thumbed through the Blue Notes and Riversides to see lots of nice looking records.  Many were not originals, and the top-dollar originals were kept on display on the walls and behind the counter.  As I was browsing I would listen to the music played on the house stereo.  It was fantastic.  After I was finished browsing I asked about the music that had been playing.  The man at the counter showed me a shelf with a few records that were displayed behind the counter.  It turns out they actually have a small record label and promote a few other small record labels.  They play and then put the records on the shelf as a way of promoting their records.  I bought four records that were from their record labels.  Some I had heard.  I was looking for something more unique that I could not find back in the U.S. and these records were all great.

I had been to a few other record shops around Tokyo and Kyoto but none were exceptional, usually small used record shops that had a decent selection of mid-range collectables, lots of lower-tier used records, and a few high-priced gems on the wall displays, but none of these places was like the last place I visited – Hal’s.  I never understood where the name Hal’s came from as the father and son owners where Japanese. Hal is not a Japanese name but I didn’t really want to ask.  All I know is that I had never seen a place like this.  Hal’s is on the fourth floor of a building in a tiny room.  They had a couple boxes outside the door in the hallway of records for $1, but when I walked inside I was amazed at how they could put so many records in such a small room.  I would estimate that the room was 15’x15’ at most and there were records everywhere.  Again, I use Jazz Record Center as my gold standard but Hal’s has close to the same amount of records in one-third the space.  What was most impressive was the selection.  It was mostly mid- and high-tier collectibles.  I mean you would thumb through the Blue Note sections and there were so many first pressings.  I saw an original Blue Trane in VG+ condition in a bin for $500.  The top-tier collectibles where mostly on the wall and behind the counter. There were so many original Blue Notes, Riversides, Prestiges, Bethlehems, and other collectible labels.  There were a fair amount of Japanese and later pressings mixed in, which were going for less than their eBay rates but the top-tier collectibles were high priced.  A NM Mobley’s Message for $800, a NM Sonny’s Crib for $1200, and other similar priced beauties.  They also had a large collection of free jazz and avant-garde, which I looked through out of curiosity.  I knew that these were highly collectible due to not many being pressed and was awed at the prices.  I have no basis for comparison since I do not collect avant-garde, but they were selling for what I think is the upper level of what they would get on eBay, same with the Blue Notes.  I have never seen such a collection in one store.  I felt like I was in a museum.  Behind the counter the owner was talking to a guy that was either a buddy or regular.  They would play records and talk about them.  I tried to snoop as best I could but I have trouble understanding Japanese people when they start talking fast, but I know they were having a lively conversation about the records they were playing, none of which was familiar to me.  I really wanted to talk with the owner and pick his brain about some of the Japanese records that were going for hundreds of dollars.  I had never heard of the artists before and was curious.  Unfortunately, I never got much of a chance as his buddy was there the whole time and I didn’t want to interrupt.  I honestly wouldn’t have paid $500 for an artist I had never heard of, but was hoping for hints on more reasonably priced albums by Japanese artists.  I had to run though.

I hope to get back to Japan in the coming years and likely will do more record hunting.  It is a unique experience that I would definitely recommend.  There is a lot of jazz appreciation in Japan and in my mind jazz cannot be appreciated enough.  Whether it is in Asia, Europe, or North America anything done to keep jazz alive is a good thing and the Japanese are definitely doing their part.

*I have converted Yen to Dollars based on the exchange rate at the time because it’s easier for me.