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Visiting Tokyo this week! Anyone have any recommendations?


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Hey VC folks,

 

I'm leaving for Tokyo Wednesday morning and I was wondering if anyone on here has ever visited (or even lived there)?  If so, any cool shit I should try and check out?  Travel tips?  Things to avoid?

 

My friends and I have a real loose list of things we want to do.  Studio Ghibli tour, Tokyo Pub Crawl and sumo wrestling are the three that I can think of off the top of my head.  I can't remember specifically where we're staying, somewhere in Central Tokyo.

 

Also, we're going to be in Kyoto and Osaka for a night.  Cool stuff to do there would be appreciated to.

 

Anyway, thanks in advance!

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Odaiba in Tokyo is nice.

 

For record stores; first go to a book store and get this: IMG_1364_zps9d27a8c8.jpg

 

I had a picture of the cover (some other year's edition) on my phone, showed it to the staff at some book store and they got it for me since I couldn't find it myself.

 

In the book are listed record stores in different cities, with a maps and all. It's in japanese, but the locations and opening hours can be easily found. There's like over 100 pages only for Tokyo area.

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Thanks for the info on that record store book!  I'll try and track that down, wish I would have asked earlier.  Would have tried to order it.  Even from the brief research I did on record stores, it seemed like there were quite a few there.  I have a data SIM for my phone, so I should be able to look stuff up on the fly too (that'll be a life saver).

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Tokyo is the best place in the whole world to go record shopping. I went wax hunting in London, Berlin, NYC, Paris, younameit and no place comes even close. I'm going again this August for the fifth time.

Be prepared to set aside a couple of days or maybe a full week for record shopping. The yen/U$D exchange rate is basically on par so you'll definitely hit something good.

 

For shows you should check out the TokyoGigGuide http://www.tokyogigguide.com/gigs but most of the underground shows are not listed.

Go to a Disk Union (see below) to pick up flyers.

 

Here's a list of my findings for record shops but I haven't visited tokyo since 2012 (and the Kansai area since 2011) so some of the following might be not up to date:

 

Disk Union has like 5 or 6 branches in Shinjuku. Map here http://diskunion.net/st/shop/e_index.html

Nat Records/Warehouse are in the same bulding http://natrecords.shop-pro.jp/?mode=f4

Vinyl Japan is close to Nat but I can't find a map (just ask the guys @ Nat). This is their address Vinyl Japan #1 – Nishi-Shinjuku 7-4-7 (03-3365-0910)

There's Shinjuku Records across the street from Nat. Only bother if you are into 80's hard rock and AOR.

Go check out the different Disk Unions in Shibuya, Ochanomizu and Nakano http://diskunion.net/st/shop/shop_map/map_do_area_english.html 
There's more smaller Disk Unions in Shimokitazawa and Ikebukuro. Just ask for all the maps in the first D.U. store you visit.

Definitely save some hours for Recofan in Shibuya http://www.recofan.co.jp/map/map_eng.html Store is HUGE!

Go to Koenji and visit Record Boy (RECORD BOY http://blog.recordboy.shop-pro.jp/?pid=14795 Koenji Building 303 4-7-10, Koenji Minami Suginami, Tokyo 166-0003 Japan) and Base (http://www.recordshopbase.com/contact.html).

 

Osaka has quite a lot to offer for the wax hunter!
Go check out Time Bomb http://www.timebomb.co.jp/store.html and KingKong Records http://www.kingkong-music.com/index.php?main_page=page_3&zenid=375fd37f7e64ef5b761e8129b9f8d72b in Namba.
Not far from these two you can find AstroZombies which carries lots of crazy toys and Pushead paraphernalia.
While you are there ask for JJ Records which has like 3 o 4 shops in the area carrying used cd's and records.

Did not find much in Kyoto. The best ones were probably JetSet (see link from the Tokyo post above) and Bootsy (this blog has a post about it and a maphttp://www.deepkyoto.com/?p=199).

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Found some advice for shows on another forum:

 

Live clubs: 
Large list of Tokyo clubs: http://www.tokyogigguide.com/en/livehouses
Specifics off the top of my head/bookmarks: 
Kurawood: http://kurawood.jp/
Earthdom: http://www1.odn.ne.jp/shinjuku-dom/index.html/menu.html
Antiknock: http://www.antiknock.net/
Shelter: http://www.loft-prj.co.jp/SHELTER/index.html
Urga: http://www.urga.net/
Hatsudai Wall: http://wall-moonstep.com/wall/top.html
Quattro: http://www.club-quattro.com/
Heaven's Door: http://www.geocities.jp/xxxheavensdoorxxx/
Hot Shot: http://homepage3.nifty.com/hotshot/
Loft: http://www.loft-prj.co.jp/LOFT/index.html

You're not going to see much this far in advance. Most clubs don't even update their schedules until the month prior. You're probably better off checking specific band websites for shows, or checking out flyers at record stores or other live gigs. August can be kind of slow though with shows, both due to hot ass humid weather, and the holiday. 

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Korgoll, thanks for all that information!  I'll parse through it tomorrow night when I have some more time.  The only show we have on our itinerary right now is deafheaven at Eggman, but I'm pretty sure we'd go see some more if we came across something interesting.

 

Do yourself a favor and goto Robot Restaurant.

 

Also Akihabara is dope if you like arcades, toy figure collectables, electronics... you gotta poke through the alleys to get to the good stores but it's pretty neat.

 

Every person I've talked to has mentioned Robot Restaurant!  We're going out of our way to go there, just the photos have sold me on it.  I'll do some research on Akihabara, that sounds like something we'd all be interested in (especially the arcades).

 

Thanks guys!

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  • 1 month later...

Bump as I'm off to tokyo for 8 days in a couple of weeks. Any more advice, Decent bars that haven't mentioned would be good!

Going to take a day trip to the Fuji-Q Highland park as well which I'm super excited on.

Can't really help you with bars and nightlife, but you should definitely check out Golden Gai, near Kabukicho, in Shinjuku:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinjuku_Golden_Gai

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Can't really help you with bars and nightlife, but you should definitely check out Golden Gai, near Kabukicho, in Shinjuku:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinjuku_Golden_Gai

 

Cheers! sounds good!

 

 

YO I LIVE IN TOKYO!!!

send me a message and we can try to meet up.

I am terrible at record shopping here cause im super short on cash but would love to go around and see

 

I'll drop you a PM dude, We'll grab a beer or something for sure.

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