June 2009

If you’re a fan of Japanese music here in the States, you face a more difficult challenge getting your fix than anime and manga fans face. There just isn’t a good, American-based distribution channel (that I’m aware of) for J-Rock or J-Pop. Amazon.com has a few major titles, even a few that you can download via their MP3 store. Surprisingly, ITunes has even fewer options, from what I’ve seen.

Frankly, I was getting frustrated with hearing great songs by artists like Bonnie Pink, High and Mighty Color, and Asian Kung-fu Generation on my Pandora channel and not being able to legally acquire the albums. Sure, I could get the MP3’s from one of the many torrent sites, but I really don’t like doing that unless there’s no other way. Fortunately, I found cdJapan, which offers DVD’s, animes, books, magazines, apparel and, most importantly, Japanese CD’s. Imagine my relief when I discovered that every CD title I could think of I found.

I quickly placed an order and expanded my personal CD library by a few albums. The titles I ordered were:

• Goover / HIGH and MIGHTY COLOR
• Sol-fa / ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION
• Thinking Out Loud [Regular Edition] / BONNIE PINK

If you haven’t heard of High and Mighty Color, here is one of their live performances of “Pride.”

High And Mighty Color – Pride (Shibuya Ax Live) from Shigure 8D on Vimeo.

I received my shipment within a few days, which is amazing, because ordinarily I expect shipments from Japan to take a couple of weeks.

Overall, the experience was so positive I signed up for cdJapan’s affiliate program so I could advertise for them on AustinOtaku.

(As a side note: you should know that I don’t advertise for just anyone. I only advertise for companies or products that I use myself and strongly recommend. I encourage you to click on any of the banners on this site, not because of any very small compensation I’ll receive, but because of the value of the products and services offered by my advertisers.)

cdJapan.co.jp deserves the following rating:
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