Disk-aunt might have just the treasure you’ve been searching for, but you’re going to have to find it yourself.

The town of Ryugasaki, in Ibaraki Prefecture, is one of those places in Japan with a name that just plain sounds cool, as it translates to “Dragon Point.” And not only does Ryugasaki have a cool name, it’s got one of the coolest, and craziest, stores we’ve been to in a long time.

Since it’s a couple prefectures over from Tokyo, you might assume that heading to Ryugasaki involves a long and difficult (or at least long and dull) journey. In truth, though, it took us just an hour and six minutes to get all the way from Tokyo to the shop in Ryugasaki that drew us to the town.

After taking JR line trains to Ryugasakishi Station, we transferred to the local Ryugasaki Line, to ride all the way to Ryugasaki Station at the end of the line. And to keep us smiling on the way…

…the inside of the train was decorated with croquettes!?!

Rygasaki has fashioned itself into a sort of holy ground for croquettes. In 2016, the town hosted the National Croquette Festival, and the special train they debuted at that time, with its mouthwateringly realistic croquette models on the hand straps, is still traveling up and down the Ryugasaki Line

After getting off at Ryugasaki Station, it was just a quick six-minute walk to the store’s entrance.

▼ You’ll know you’ve arrived when you see these chickens.

So where exactly were we headed? A store called Disk-aunt, which is written in Japanese as ディスカウント and pronounced “Disukaunto,” just like the Japanese rendering of the English word “discount.” Disk-aunt isn’t a typo, though, because this is a store that specializes in used CDs.

Disc-aunt’s CD section is on the third floor, so we rode the elevator up. But if you were expecting shelves of carefully slotted CD cases…

…think again!

Yep, Disk-aunt has a huge collection of CDs contained in a huge mountain of cardboard boxes. Or, alternatively, you could call this a pool of boxes, because this room used to actually be a fitness gym’s swimming pool.

▼ You can see the rails that used to be used by people entering/exiting the pool, and also the tile flooring in this photo.

As you can probably guess, there isn’t any sort of organization or grouping to the CDs. Regardless of the artist, genre, or release year you’re looking for, there’s basically as much chance of it being in any one box as another.

So the only thing to do is dig through boxes until you find a piece of buried treasure.

The Disk-aunt staff was nice enough to lend us some gloves. They also let us know the one rule about searching through the boxes, which is that shoppers are asked to refrain from just turning the boxes over and dumping the contents out, since they want to preserve what uncluttered, walkable floorspace they have.

And obviously, Disk-aunt’s staff isn’t going to take the time to individually appraise and price every CD. So instead, there’s a flat pricing system of 100 yen (US$0.65) per disk, with one free for every 10 you buy.

More so than an eccentric collection of rare, unknown artists, Disk-aunt’s stock is the end of the reselling line for all sorts of big hits of yesteryear/yesterdecade. During our excavation, we uncovered nostalgic releases from J-pop legends such as Zard and Puffy.

Our anime/video game-loving hearts then leapt when we pulled out a Sakura Wars 2 song collection CD…

…but this brings us to a point of caution when shopping at Disk-aunt. Because of the chaotic stocking system, sometimes the cases don’t contain the actual disc indicated on the cover. For example, when we opened up the Sakura Wars 2 case, what we found inside was instead a collection of songs by enka vocalist Miyako Otsuki (大月みやこ), whose singing career ended in 1979, nearly 20 years before Sakura Wars 2’s release.

In other words, you’re going to want to check the contents of the CDs before you make any purchases…although that’s not an issue if you’re digging through some of the shop’s crates of loose, uncased CDs.

Speaking of crates, Disk-aunt does have a room with crates of single CDs, extra-compact 8-centimeter compact discs that usually held a main song, a “coupling song”/B-side, and vocal-less karaoke mixes of both. Though these smaller disks were eventually phased out by the Japanese music industry, for much of the ‘90s and the early part of the 2000s, these discs formed the backbone of many J-pop fans’ music collections, as the industry was heavily focused on single releases.

▼ We couldn’t resist picking up Judy and Mary’s “Sobakasu” (“Freckles”), one of the most instantly recognizable J-pop/rock anthems of the mid-‘90s.

In addition to digital music, Disk-aunt also carries used cassette tapes, DVDs, and VHS tapes. Some of these are non-commercial releases, literally recordings of who-knows-what made by the original owners that somehow found their way to the store.

▼ “Festival DVD” says the handwriting on this DVD-R.

▼ “Female Teacher Special” reads this VHS label written in red, and while that might sound like it could be some sort of educational training video, the parenthetical notation underneath with the name of adult film actress Yuko Asama suggests the contents are probably something less academically minded.

Even if you don’t end up buying anything, a trip to Disk-aunt is a chance to literally dig through the history of Japanese music and entertainment, especially in an era that presents us with fewer and fewer chances for tactile interaction with physical media. Before you rush on over to Ryugasaki, though, be aware that shopping at Disk-aunt is available by reservation only, but all you have to do to set up a reservation is contact the store through its official Twitter account here.

Related: Disk-aunt official Twitter account
Photos ©SoraNews24
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