Record Store Visit: Record Shop Base - Tokyo, Japan - 12/29/16

Sadly, this is the last of the Tokyo record stores that I visited on my trip to Japan.  No matter how much I write about each one, it's impossible to accurately describe how great these stores were and how much it meant to me to finally go record shopping in Japan.  It was something that I had been wanting to do as long as I can remember.  Again, I must thank Kazu from Waterslide records.  Not only did he take me around to all of these stores, he also dug with me and helped me find quite a few things I was looking for.  It would have been easy to get overwhelmed if it wasn't for his assistance.  Cheers friend!

Record Shop Base was a killer store.   It just felt right.  Kind of small, packed to the rafters with tons

of records and a pretty heavy emphasis on the punk rock side of the spectrum.  Though they stocked more than just punk rock.  They had a solid used section and in particular some great 7"s to dig through.  The thing that stood out most to me here was that this was the store that I finally was able to find a Ron Ron Clou record at.  Sure, it was their covers album, but I was so thrilled to finally find one of their albums after coming up empty at the rest of the stores.

In addition to Ron Ron Clou, I also picked up a bunch of 7"s and some CDs as well.  That's the one thing that I really took away from record shopping in Japan: CDs.  I bought more CDs on this one day than I had probably bought in the previous 5 years.  It's just different there, CDs never went away and I would say that most of the Japanese punk rock I was looking for just never was released on LP.  Still at least it wasn't a bunch of cassettes!

I had such an amazing time in Tokyo, from start to finish it was simply the trip of a lifetime.  Every day we did something amazing, but that day we did nothing but record shopping will always stand out.  Everyone should get the chance to do that.