Part of the pleasure of record hunting in Tokyo is the sheer difficulty of finding the shops. For the navigationally-challenged (like me)  the Japanese street-addressing system can take some getting used to. But it makes reaching your goal even more rewarding when you finally do. After almost an hour trawling Dogenzaka and finding only yakitori bars and love hotels, I located Lighthouse Records down the obligatory alleyway, up several flights of stairs and naturally in a completely different area to where I thought it would be.

Well worth the search though – great selection of House music old, new and all the in between varietals. They also stock Nagaoka carts and a selection of t-shirts and bags. Like many Japanese record shops most of the stock, secondhand or new, has small handwritten labels explaining what the record is, who produced it and so on. These are in Japanese of course but the key names are usually in English so it’s possible to find interesting things that you might have otherwise been unaware of.

Plus there’s Lighthouse’s impressive in-house sound system: Levinson amp, Klipschorn speakers and vintage Urei mixer.

3F Seijitsu Bldg. 2-9-2 Dogenzaka Shibuya-ku Tokyo 159-0043