Skip to main content

Record Store Day 2021


Sunday, June 13th, was Record Store Day 2021 in Japan. I took the following Monday to make a trip to Tower Vinyl in Shinjuku.


“Tower Vinyl” is a recent addition to the large Tower Records Shinjuku branch. The store spans four floors with Tower Vinyl being the highest. Tower Vinyl is Tower Records’ first vinyl record exclusive store in Japan.

You’d think that Tower Vinyl would be Japanese record heaven, but most of the store is western music. The new Japanese records are contained to a pretty small section and they have a sizable “used” Japanese section. I couldn’t find much that appealed to me in the used section, to be honest. It looked like a lot of enka from the 80’s.

Actually, I was most excited to visit after seeing some great deals on Tower Records’ online store. Some of the records on my hit-list were on sale for around 80-90% off. But when I found one of the records I wanted with a full price sticker, I asked the staff if the online sale prices applied in store, but apparently they didn’t. Oh well. I ordered the sale records that were still available on the site during my train ride back home. 😆

I didn’t leave empty-handed, though. I bought Helsinki Lambda Club’s album “Eleven plus two/Twelve plus one”, which was released for Record Store Day 2021. I’ll definitely be playing some tracks off it on the show soon. ✌️


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The end of Japan Jukebox

 I've neglected this blog for a while, but have been wanting to revive it. I guess the first thing I should address is the ending of our radio show Japan Jukebox, though it is long-overdue. We ran Japan Jukebox from about (over?) 10 years with a new episode every week. It was a labor of love for us, because Japanese music has never been just a "hobby". It has been part of our lives for as long as we can remember. I enjoyed sharing my favorite music and finding a lot of new bands to share on the radio, but the weekly process was pretty overwhelming. It was rare that we would have episodes queued up for broadcast. It was almost always week by week, with the episodes finished and uploaded in the 11th hour. And of course life happens. I have gotten married, had children, become busy with work, etc. With less time to focus on Japan Jukebox, I couldn't guarantee the quality of the show. So, a while back, I limited my role. Without Zach and my brother Cody, the show would ha...

Live report! "Scrappy Travelling for Miles Tour 2023" NINE MILES & Kaminarigumo + Yoshiaki Manabe

 On July 14th, Cody and I attended Kaminarigumo's & Yoshiaki Manabe's "Scrappy Travelling for Miles Tour 2023" at Koenji HIGH. This was a particularly special show, because it featured the very first live performance of Yoshiaki Manabe's (from the pillows) "NINE MILES" solo project. For this new incarnation of NINE MILES, Keiji Ueno from Kaminarigumo takes charge of the vocals. Ghoma (also Kaminarigumo) provides keyboard. To start off, I'll write about how the return of NINE MILES and the album "Into the light again" came to be. The revival of NINE MILES started in early 2023 when Yoshiaki Manabe was asked to join Kaminarigumo's summer tour as the support guitarist. Manabe thought it would be an interesting idea to play as NINE MILES as an opening act, and asked the other members if they'd like to do it. He thought it would be nice to have a tour t-shirt for the occasion, so he asked his bandmate from the pillows Sawao Yamanaka ...

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of Losing Lawson's Campaign

From May 9th, the Lawson convenience stores in Japan started their promotion for the upcoming, anticipated sequel to 2017's Breath of the Wild, "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom". The campaign included various Zelda themed food items, as well as snacks. Arguably though, the most attractive feature of the campaign is(was?) the lottery. I tried nearly all of it, so I'll write about it here. First up, the food items.  The biggest charm about the Lawson Zelda collaboration food is that they are named as if they had been crafted in the game. I was most excited to try the "spicy pepper" version of the popular "Karaagekun" series. It has a nice level of spiciness; more so than any other versions of Karaagekun that I have tried. "Beast meat curry bread". Tasted basically like standard Japanese curry pan, but a very good one! I popped it in the toaster for a couple minutes and it was delicious. "Goron Spice dry-curry onigiri". Y...