Tokyo Shops and Magazines

via peterwendt. follow-up to this post.

"Urban Music - Hammonds and vintage synths. I didn't find the place.

Sofmap Creator's Land (in Googlish)
Sofmap is a big PC/software/etc. chain. "Creators Land" denotes their shops for audio, MIDI, desktop video, etc. There are some big "generic" Sofmap shops in Akihabara and a multistory Creators Land. I seem to remember:

1st floor = desktop music (Edirol, etc.)
2nd floor = new hardware
3rd and 4th floors = used

There is another Creators Land in Shinjuku, I think; the selection of used stuff wasn't as good.


There was a new+vintage shop called Modern Tools in northern Tokyo, but I can't find their WWW site anymore. They had a Roland System 100m, Yamaha CS-50, and lots more.

RockOn in Shibuya had a very small used selection, but I liked it for new stuff. Sort of a combination of Analog Haven and GC Pro. Doepfer, Jomox, and Studio Electronics in one corner; big control surfaces and high-end preamps at the other end. They were the Japanese agents for Technosaurus, and they had the "small" Sony Oxford digital mixer (RMX-100).

I visited a few more grungy little used stores, but I can't really recommend them.

Japanese musicians' magazines:
Sound&Recording (in Googlish)
Keyboard (in Googlish)
DTM (in Googlish)

At least you can see what the covers look like.
Where to get the magazines: Kinokinuya Bookstores (in Googlish)

Buy the magazines here and drool over the ads.

Searching for deals and shops in Japan: Digimart (like eBay for musicians) (in Googlish)

Sorry, this is all in Japanese. You can convert it too Googlish, or ...

A lot of the terms are actually in phonetic (Japanese) English! The angular "letters" are the Japanese katakana "alphabet". Find a basic study outline about Japanese with a table of katakana symbols. Using the table, you can find terms like "synzesiza", "osciray-ta", "keybodo", "kontro-ra", and "fil-ta". Even if you don't want to learn Japanese in general, this will help you a lot. Browse www.fiveg.net, and you can learn the characters for "used", etc., from the links.

Oh, and if you visit ... Shibuya caters to techno and DJ stuff, and J-pop; it's a 20-something place. There are DJ-focused gear shops (including Echigoya Music), huge billboards of the latest female J-pop stars, and the "young and fashionable" department stores will have videos of battle DJs in the display windows. After 9-10 PM, there were young rock bands playing on the street corners. The sea of humanity on the weekends is unbelievable.

I hope this is useful.

Regards,

Peter"