In the area of Chiba where I live, Ichikawa-shi, garbage is separated into five categories – burnable, non-burnable, harmful, oversize, and finally recyclables. Burnable garbage should be out before 7 AM on the assigned day – it is defined as food scraps, waste paper, wood, fabric, styrofoam, plastic, vinyl, leather, and rubber goods. Non-burnable garbage is defined as china, small electric household appliances, broken glass, knives, cosmetic bottles, pierced spray cans, and so on – in this case, garbage should be out before 8 AM on the assigned day. Harmful garbage is defined as batteries, fluorescent bulbs, mirrors, and mercury thermometers – fluorescent bulbs should be tied together with a string.
So, which category do CDs belong to? CDs are neither fish nor flesh, neither vinyl nor rubber, neither glass nor steel. Perhaps, CDs should be placed in the harmful garbage bins, since their surface is reflective, like a mirror.
One often wonders, where does a good band go when it dies? Japan, of course. And you can’t fully understand the absolute glut of product that exists until you’ve been here. Believe me, the market’s been flooded. I can see it clearly from here.
All matter of obscurity, basically everything under the sun, can be found in Japan.
I can walk 5 minutes through a narrow corridor with the train tracks overhead to Baraki-Nakayama train station. In the long, nuclearish winter that just finished, I dreaded this corridor, because giant swirling dust clouds always engulfed me. And there’s always dogs barking. There’s a park underneath the train tracks. A few swings and some monkey bars, but I’ve never seen any kids playing in its shadows. There’s lots of holes in the walk. I know a girl who got her high heel stuck in one. There’s strange horizontal bars appearing at random in the middle of the corridor. The other day, I was dialing a number on my cel phone, and I smashed my shin on one of these bars. On another night, I fell down drunk, and skinned my hand in this corridor.
I live at the end of the world, I’m certain. It’s also the strangest place I’ve ever gone record shopping in my life. There’s a tiny little store near the station, which I never see anyone go into. It’s one of those sparsely stocked CD stores, that seemingly only keeps about 300 titles in stock – a few Mariah Carey CDs, but mostly Japanese pop music. There’s some Beach Boys records on the wall, but probably from the owner’s private collection, because there’s nothing by the Beach Boys for sale. However, I noticed two boxes at the front of the store, the bargain bins, and I picked up a Company Flow disc (fairly underground crew on New York’s Rawkus label until recently), hardly the sort of thing you’d expect to find. The other store in the area specializes in used video games and manga. It has two shelves of foreign used CDs. I picked up a wicked soft reggae compilation for 400 Yen, a double Charles Mingus live CD for 1200 Yen, a Rawkus compilation for 900 Yen, a Carl Craig CD for 500 Yen, and others I don’t remember.
But my biggest score, the piece de resistance, came last Saturday night, after all my plans for a good night out were thwarted. I went to the local video store, and checked out the rental CDs at the front, mostly J-pop – but again, there was a foreign section, which is interesting, because it’s such a pretty random collection of stuff. But anyway, I stumbled upon a section, where you could buy used rentals. What a fucking score! I walked out of the store with one movie rented, three CDs rented, and 16 used CDs – all of this for only 2600 Yen, or about $32 Canadian. Here’s what I bought, at 100 Yen apiece: a Dennis Brown CD with Sly & Robbie listed in the musician’s credits; an Inner Circle CD, featuring their early 70s songs, a Japanese label licensing from the Trojan reggae label; a Japanese CD composed for the Formula 1 World Championship in 93; a CD called Skycruisin from an artist whose other CDs are titled Hot Is Cool, Avenue of Entertainment, and Ocean Drive; three singles by a J-pop group called Globe; Ole Ole Ole, a covers collection of songs made famous by various European soccer teams, such as Liverpool FC’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, the soundtrack to the Spike Lee movie New Jersey Drive; Slow Jam, your standard R&B compilation, with a stunning Jodeci track with Erick Sermon on the remix tip; the soundtrack to Evangelion, a very cool anime; a Ryuichi Sakamoto single, “Energy Flow”, that got heavy air mileage in Japan after getting played in a commercial; Ultimate Hits from the Jive record label, including classic tracks by Hi-Five, Aaliyah, and D.J. Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince; and others.
Some of them burnable and some of them just harmful.
