If “New York is the city that never sleeps” then “Tokyo is the city that never ends.” It’s just so vast, so colossal, so limitless. There are neighborhoods inside of neighborhoods inside of neighborhoods. Even if you lived here your whole life, maybe even 2 or 3 whole lives, you’d be hard-pressed to know it all. And always is the case that just if or when that fleeting feeling comes when you sense you’re getting close to knowing it, it either sheds a layer, generates another, or on a whim, presents a completely new pocket of itself that simply couldn’t have existed before, like an impossibly faceted origami that you can infinitely unfold.
Well, I found Tohto Records, an absolute GEM of a record store, deep in one of those origami folds, in the back streets of a neighborhood I’d never heard of, but driven past heaps of time, right in the heart of hearts of Tokyo. It truly was like finding a diamond in the rough, one more giant gold nugget just when you thought the mine was tapped out. After meeting the very friendly proprietor, Tetsuya, earlier in the year, and bearing witness to his brimming chest of little-known treasures, I knew I’d have to eventually put “Tohto Records and Books” on the “Tokyo Record Style Day” map, which is what my record-loving pals and I finally did last Saturday.
A sudden noon downpour tried to divert a small group of us from meeting at Tohto right when it opened, but we were mostly unphased by the summer rain and made our way there and through the endlessly cool sections and subsections of music, books, and more. We unearthed gem after gem, and talked and talked, Tetsuya told us all about Moonriders and how they emerged from rock pioneers and Happy End peers, Hachimitsu Pie. We scored some grails, doted over books and posters, even spied a vintage Playboy or two! Great times, indeed! Thanks, Tetuya!
From Tohto, we strolled over to Ochanomizu where the 4 of us became 5, then feasted on some BK burgers, fries, and cokes, made some great photos (soon come…) then went one more round at Disk Union before saying Sayonara! Thanks everybody for coming!
Tokyo Record Style Day Rules! See you at the next one!
More TRS on the way!
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