What’s up! My Japan trip has officially come to an end after a month and a half. While it was absolutely amazing, my biggest takeaway was realizing how difficult it is to stay locked in on pumping out regular content while I’m traveling — it’s not easy to stay up-to-date on releases, research, and writing, especially when you’re a one person operation in a completely different timezone.
Alas, I am back at the SNL HQ for a measly 12 hours before I fly out for a brand trip, but next week I’m finally back in full force with regular content. I’m going to be working overtime to catch up on the topics I missed to gear you up for the cold season ahead, so if you have any special topic requests make sure you leave those comments below!
I don’t have to tell you about the fantastic shopping that can be done while traveling to Japan. Clothing stores are plentiful, so much so that it’s impossible to hit everything you want even if you’re there for over a month. While I did plenty of shopping for clothes which I’ll talk about later, I was mainly focusing on acquiring rare books and magazines for my archive.
Japan’s book shopping is one of the best in the world, at least in my personal experience thus far. The curation and dedication to archiving allows you to find some of the most rare publications in person. Prices vary as they would, but in my experience they are still much better than what you find online.
The internet is cooked and it’s only getting worse. I wrote about the importance of building out a physical library and how creating an archive you can reference and learn from is one of the most important things you can do for yourself right now — we got AI companies literally buying up books to scan them into their databases and then they destroy the books after. I mean, what are we even doing??
In today’s letter, I wrote a guide on some of the best book shopping in Japan. These bookshops are great for anyone who’s into art, fashion books and magazines, from rare copies and discontinued editions that are impossible to find.
Today’s letter is a paid subscriber special: I was contemplating making this list free, but in all honesty I don’t really need everyone to know all the spots. Some are obvious and you can probably figure it out on your own if you ask around, but there are definitely some bookstores that I would rather just keep hush hush, and you should too.
A Google Maps list to all the bookstores will be available to sync at the bottom of today’s letter. I’m in the process of cleaning up the full Japan Google Maps list for shopping, restaurants, bars, etc., and this new book list is the first step — click here to access my current Google Maps Lists for Japan
THE LIST
(Every store below is my must visit recommendation and is available directly on my Google Maps list which you can sync at the bottom of today’s letter)