Tower Records, though dead in New York, is alive and well in Tokyo. In fact, the yellow skyscraper that houses its Shibuya location has a very visible red neon logo and so it serves as a landmark to help guide British School mums in and around this massive and not-so-easy-to-navigate shopping district. Two popular destinations with ex-pat homemakers are Tokyu Hands and Loft, department stores that sell everything from stationery to alarm clocks to Crocs. There's even a small Muji that you can get to from a corridor inside Loft. Stores are connected to each other in this way, and they are all so huge and occupy multiple floors, luckily you can usually find a floor plan printed in English.
But back to Tower. We noticed something called Tower Cafe in Ebisu, and so the boys and I finally checked it out this afternoon. From the wide open spaces, completely deserted ragtag collection of couches and easy chairs and the unmanned bar, I gathered that the place is mainly a nightclub, but there is a cafe set apart from the bigger space, and it was open, and there were some young people there with their MacBooks. The small shop next to the cafe was also open, selling Moleskine journals, art books and of course, CDs. The hipsters working the register didn't give us a second glance as C paged through DK's encyclopedic guide to Transformers and D put on headphones to listen to Radiohead.
If anyone is feeling nostalgic for Tower and needs a logo T-shirt, hat or towel, let me know, the shop has those too.
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