Often in a city
You get areas that are known for certain things
With lots of specialist shops
So a really famous one here in Tokyo
Is Kappabashi
Which is Kitchen Town
You can buy lots of cooking stuff
And plates and things
There's a video about it on my channel
Another area is Nippori
Which has lots of fabric shops
For dressmaking
There's another area that's known for book shops
Today we've come ot Ochanomizu
Which is known for musical instrument shops
There's supposed to be loads of guitar shops here
And all sorts of other instruments
It's in north east Tokyo
Not far from Akihabara
That's just that way, across the river
So today we've come here just to have a look around
And see what there is
Phil's hoping to find some drum shops
Because he plays drums
And he's always after new drum bits
This video might not be for everyone
But hopefully there'll be a few interesting things
Even if you're not into guitars or music
When you're in Japan
Or travelling anywhere
I think it's important to do the things that interest you
Rather than the top 10 tourist destinations
That's really the advantage of booking your own trip
And travelling independently
You can build your own tour
Of things that you love
We're going to take a walk around Ochanomizu
Then after that
I'll show you a couple of other places
Where we found music shops in Tokyo
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When you go to a new area
Sometimes it can be tricky to know where to go
Or where the main section is
But straight away
It was clear we were in the right place
We've just come out the station
And we've spotted a few guitar shops
Across the road
So that might be it there
Big Boss over there
Some guitars on that sign
Guitar Planet next door
Guitar planet goes up quite a lot of floors
We've spotted this interesting-looking building
The architecture does tend to be pretty mixed in Tokyo
You don't often get all the buildings matching on one street
But this one: very fancy
We're starting off with Big Boss Super Guitar Shop
And they've put the cute things outside
Anpanman percussion
Sesame Street
Kumamon
Daruma shakers
Probably meant to be for kids...
It says they have english speaking staff
So ask if you've got any questions
They really did have english speaking staff
A guy came up to help us
And he sounded like he was from England
Basically!
He was really good
And the people were really friendly and helpful
Behind me this is a shop specialising entirely in ukeleles
That's all they have
All the uke -le
All the ukeleles you can think of!
There's a brass shop over there
Lots of shiny instruments inside
Sorry I haven't been showing you the insides that much
You can't really film inside shops
Inside they're just like music shops in England really
I quite like the feel of music shops
Because they're kind of cosy
And relaxed
And they've got loads of stuff in them
To start with, the shops seemed like music shops pretty much anywhere
But then we started to notice small differences
Something we've noticed
About the drum sections
Both here and other music shops we've been to in Japan
They always seem to have a little scales
For weighing the drum sticks
To check that they're balanced
And they match correctly
Which is something you don't often see in the UK
It's good attention to detail
And makes it seem like they really care
Just look at the choice
These are all guitar cases
The shops are mainly down the main street
But there's a few off down side streets
If you're learning Japanese
You can practice your katakana on the signs
This always distracts me a lot
Here we've got "secondhand"
"Gi-ta" for "guitars"
And next door there's one you'll see a lot:
Karaoke
And as you can see
There's lots of English too
So it's really not a problem if you don't know any Japanese
As always in Japan
Sometimes shops are upstairs
Or in some unlikely looking places
There's another ukelele shop across here
They seem to be quite popular
I wonder if it's because people tend to have small houses
So it's more of a practical instrument to play
We've just been in a brass shop
And had a look at some trombones
There were some entry-level ones
That seemed quite cheap
Then they had some that were like 200,000 yen
That were really expensive
They must have been high-end, fancy ones
There wasn't a lot in the middle
They seemed to have the cheap ones and the expensive ones
But I'm no expert on trombones
I dont' know what you'd normally expect
There's a little Hello Kitty guitar
And this is an unusual one as well
We've seen a few guitars that have quite unusual finishes
It's got clouds as markers on the frets
Cute with heart-shaped hole!
You can see the "Japan Tax-Free Shop" sign up there
A few shops here in Japan
If you show your passport
Foreigners don't have to pay tax
Usually on the price signs
It tells you the price without tax
And then much smaller, the price with tax
It's only about 500m long
So it's not massive
But how many music shops do you normally find in your town
There'd probably only be one
So if you like playing something, or if you're in a band
Or especially if you play guitar
There's a lot of guitar shops here
With the prices, I've been having a look
It's kind of hard to say
When we're not experts
I can convert things like 1000 yen or 10 yen pretty easily
On the spot
But when it gets to 200,000
A million yen
It gets a bit more tricky
But from what we've seen
It's not cheap
But it's not mega expensive either
So prices are comparable
And a lot of the shops are tax free for foreigners
If you show your passport
I'd say, just the sheer number of shops here
And the amount each of them have crammed in
If you're looking for a specific guitar
You might find it
They seem ot have some with unusual finishes and patterns
And ones that looked interesting to me at least
We've been to another guitar shop in Osaka
Oh yeah, if you're going to Osaka
There's a few music shops around Amemura
America Mura
Or America Village
Which is quite near the main area in Dotonbori
So that's worth looking at if you like music
They had some extremely expensive, rare guitars
They seemed quite happy ot let you play them as well
And I wouldn't trust myself with them
If you're going to Akihabara
This is only one metro stop away
Going into the city
So it's pretty easy to pop over here and visit
When you're in the area
You can probably walk it actually
It didn't look like that far
Actually it's only a 10 minute walk
Just half a mile
It's called Ochanomizu
Ocha means tea
And mizu means water
So does it mean tea water?
I don't know
Probably not!
Turns out that's exactly what it means
Ochanomizu is by the river
Where they used ot get water for the shogun's tea
During the edo period
Not sure anyone would want to drink it now though!
While there are lots of music shops in this area
That's not the only place you can find them in Tokyo
So here's some others we've found
We just found an actual drum shop in Akihabara
Not far from Ochanomizu
It's just a couple of minutes walk from the station
It's called Drum Station
Phil picked up some drumsticks and a drum trigger
For a pretty good price
Not going to be what every drummer wants
But this was just over half price
I think what you'd normally get in the UK
Wow, that's good
It's a proper bargain
I've been looking at one for a while
But I didn't want to pay the price you'd pay in the UK
Nothing else seemed to be a real bargain
So I don't know if it's mis-priced
Or if it's just cheap here
I don't know
Good for us anyway!
In Japan there's a chain called Book Off
Which sells secondhand books, games, music and DVDs
The "off" refers to "off the price"
They're all discounted
And pretty good prices
We've just been into
Hard Off
Which stands for hardware off
So they have discounted
Games hardware
They had musical instruments
Computer and camera bits
And all sorts of things
On the top floor it said it was the Junk Department
And some of it really was!
They had all these boxes with just loose things in
One of them was just a box of old remote controls
At this Hard off in Shimokitazawa
They had quite a few musical instruments
A whole floor of them
Probably because this area's known for music
It's got a lot of gig venues
So there must be a lot of bands around here
It's a good place to look for things at good prices
As well as musical instruments
They had a whole load of cheap mixers
Like mixing desks
And power adapters
And all the little bits and accessories that you might lose
Now we're in Shinjuku
And a music shop to look out for here is Rock Inn
You can find it on Google Maps
It's got a lot of guitars
The third floor is specifically a high-end guitar section
And look up there
They've got a drum kit in the window
What a place to play your drums
With a view of Shinjuku
There's guitars, bass & drums
There's the high-end guitar section on the third floor
Another place I've seen musical instruments
Is Yodobashi Camera
Which is a huge shop
That sells pretty much everything
It's interesting to look round
Whatever you're into
It has multiple floors
Each one's about the size of a supermarket
I really can't tell you
How big this shop is
They've got branches all around Japan
Including Akihabara & Shinjuku
In Tokyo
I'm sure that's not all the music shops in Tokyo,
So if you know any good ones,
Put them in the comments!
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And I'll be back next week
With more videos about Japan
I'll see you on Thursday