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Yes, I know now you feel. I visited Japans twice. Although audio was not my main objective but I spent some time for audio. Even I was at that time less critical and less demanding then I would be today still I  was not pleased what I heard. Also, I was not pleased with entire protocol how I was able to socialize with Japanese folks. I have a woman with me who was a translator but she was not truly able support a conversation about complex subjects – so, it was very frustrating.

Since I became more mature and more experience with my audio interests I do not search for interesting sound out there. If I want interesting for me sound then I have it home. So, from others, I expect not the different sounds but rather different objectives. It is interesting to talk with people after listening what sound they showed but with the Japanese folks that I met in Japan I was not able to.

I was not thrilled with their piles of equipment, perhaps was thrilled but it was cheap idiotic thrill, that left very little. What was the real thrill was the huge wealth of phenomenal records that I saw in there. I bought quote a lot but now I wish that I would buy much more…

Do you know what was the most thrilling audio experience I had in Japan?  I remember I stopped by in one second hand record store somewhere around Tokyo and I saw a whole section of un-played 78s. I mean the 78s brand new “in paper”, deep black, with huge tool grooves…. If you heard the first play of the 78s and if you know what kind sound they offer then you know what I mean. I remember there was Toscanini and Horowitz play of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No 1. It was Carnegie Hall play in 1943, know as War Bond Concert, when Horowitz raised money for US Government.  This 1943 concert was special as it was just after the Rachmaninoff deaths …. And I held the first un-played copy.  I also held the brand new, absolutely virgin, never-played record of Mattia Battistini from 1911. Can you believe the history of the 100 year old records that never was played?

Those memories are more fun to me than the meeting a mountain of audio equipment semi-stupidly arranged in semi-ignorant playback systems.

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