I can take “Buy a synthesizer at the Tokyo Roland Store” off my bucket list!

While in Tokyo, I had to make at a stop that I’ve always wanted to visit: Roland Store Tokyo, the flagship store of the venerable Roland, maker of all sorts of electronic music instruments. The store is located in Harajuku, right in the middle of where Tokyo’s various youth subcultures hang out, and where tourists (admittedly including myself) come to check out all the quirky shops, especially those devoted to kawaii. If you’re an electronic musician and in Tokyo, this store is a must-visit… It was the last hours of our last day in Tokyo, so we were short on time. That meant that I had to stick to the main floor (the synthesizer floor), and that’s why my photos are of. The entryway featured the hot new boutique synths of the moment: The Jupiter-08, a “boutqiue-sized” digital recreation of the 1981 classic, the Jupiter 8 The n/vision, a “boutique-sized” wavetable synth Both were so new that they weren’t going on sale for a couple of days. The display models were there to give…