The pilgrimage

Tower Records Tokyo still feels impossible if you grew up after the collapse of physical media retail. Floor after floor of tightly curated excess: listening stations, handwritten staff notes, entire aisles dedicated to genres that barely exist as Spotify categories.

I went in without a list and came out with a stack heavy on Japanese fusion, late-90s electronic pop, and a few long-standing blind spots finally corrected.

Casiopea — Casiopea (1979)

Casiopea

Casiopea

1979-05-25

This album has followed me for years as a kind of reference point—something I knew I liked without ever sitting down and committing to. In the store, it felt irresponsible not to finally own it.

What stands out isn’t virtuosity (though there’s plenty), but restraint. The band knows exactly when to lock into a groove and when to show off, and rarely confuses the two. It’s music that respects your attention span.

Perfume — Game (2008)

GAME

Perfume

2008-04-16

Perfume occupies a strange space for me: historically important, aesthetically fascinating, but inconsistent on an album level. Game is probably the cleanest articulation of their early sound, but it still feels more like a collection of ideas than a fully resolved statement.

That said, the production has aged better than expected. Yasutaka Nakata’s digital minimalism feels intentional rather than dated, especially when heard on physical media.

Masakatsu Takagi — One Room Survival (2005)

One-Room Survival

Serani Poji

2002-11-21

This was the surprise of the trip. I picked it up almost accidentally, drawn more by the cover than any familiarity with the work itself.

It’s intimate without being precious. Fragile, but not slight. The compositions feel like sketches that somehow survived intact, which is rare. This is the kind of album that changes how you listen for a few days afterward.

An old friend, face to face

I used to want to write to Tatsuro Yamashita.

My high school friends and I listened to a lot of city pop back when it became an internet phenomenon in the early 2010s. One friend in particular was not bashful about singing, and was studying Japanese, so he made a point to practice his vocal chords to Yamashita’s work in the car as we drove through all that Midwestern nothingness.

After about a year of this, I made an unprompted comment that I wanted to write to him, thanking him for bringing us some joy on the other end of the globe. That letter was never written.

Lo and behold, on the first floor of Tower Records Tokyo, I saw the album that he burned into my memory.

For You

Tatsuro Yamashita

1982-01-21

It had been a while since I last heard it. It’s one of the many albums from this period that is not on the big international music streaming services. This is regionally analogous to streaming holdout of Prince - I was always surprised he didn’t go for it even with a growing Western audience.

Tats - as my friend group used to lovingly refer to him - has a joyful, emotive quality to his performance. He is both sincere and lively, and much of his music is about labors of love. I suppose it’s no surprise

That singing friend and I had a falling out a number of years ago and no longer keep in touch. It had been years since singing in those car rides, and the distance of college and COVID built differences that felt like too much friction to withstand. I admit that I don’t really recall our last conversation - I was just tired of the discomfort. Without a word, I left that long-standing group chat for good.

He lives in Japan now with his wife and children. When I went to Tokyo for the first time, I didn’t even tell him I went. It was my first international trip with my life partner, and despite the brilliance of it all, I felt remorseful for most of the trip. Shortly after leaving Tower Records with For You in my yellow plastic carrying bag, I thought I saw him at the crosswalk with his wife. The guilt made me jumpy, I guess.

This frayed connection leaves a lot of the joy of For You feeling bittersweet and unresolved for me. Much like my old friend, it has been a long time with zero contact, and it feels a bit unrecognizable. I can’t help but feel we’re just in different places now.

Cornelius — Fantasma (1997)

Fantasma

Cornelius

2008-04-16

If Fantasma feels obvious now, that’s only because so much of what it attempted became normalized afterward. Heard again, in sequence, it’s still wildly ambitious—restless, referential, and surprisingly playful.

This is one of those records where owning it physically feels correct. The format reinforces the intent.

Leaving with weight

I left Tower Records carrying more than I planned, which feels like the correct outcome. Not everything earned a permanent place, but everything earned time and attention—and that’s the real value of spaces like this.

The shelf gets heavier. The signal gets clearer.