A little question. Are the Pillows albums for sale in about every record store in Japan? If I want some older stuff, do I have to tell my daddy to search in some particular place? He's going on a business trip to Japan and I'm of course asking him to fill in my Pillows collection.

And what about the band scores?

(split your post over into this new topic since that wasn't what the other thread was for)

Since the pillows aren't a mega-popular band in Japan, you won't be able to find their entire discographies in stores. Tower records, HMV, and other such mainstream CD shops will carry a few albums and possibly a DVD or two, though it might be stuff you already have. Band scores can be found at book stores and music stores (like instrument stores).

However, your best bet for buying pillows albums and band scores is online at various sites such as hmv.co.jp, cdjapan.co.jp, amazon.co.jp, and otaku.com. Otaku.com has, I believe, every album except pantomime and 90s my life, and all three band scores.

Another good place to look in Japan is BookOff, a used book/CD store chain that's found all over in Japan. The CDs are going to be in perfect or practically perfect shape and cost about half the price of retail.

Thanks a lot.

Online stores have the problem called credit cards. I'm going to be so poor for a couple of years that I'm not going to risk my financy with them. I'm so bad at using money... I'm certain I would have my bank account below zero for the most of the time. Why can't they accept bank transfers like thomann.de?

Then there is currency. Some sites seem to think that euro and dollar are worth the same, but in reality one euro is worth about 1,5 dollars. This is mostly empty whining since this shouldn't be problem at PayPal...

Gotta put that BookOff behind my ear.

You can use a debit card instead of a credit card, which makes it the same thing as paying with a check. Also, I'm pretty sure that the sites I mentioned aren't going to rip you off on the exchange rates. Good luck with however you decide to get stuff, it's always good to see people supporting the pillows.

The stores don't have any control over the exchange rate. It's actually the credit card company or the bank handling the transaction that determines the exchange rate... oh and they like to add a little exchange fee.

Yeah, I knew that. Sorry for unclear talk, but what I meant was sites like gameknot.com, which is a site i play chess at. They take $40 for a year of premium membership, but Europeans can pay via bank transfer and the fee is €40 which is about $60. I'm not paying that for priciples sake, if nothing else.

On topic: I'm kinda decided my list of CD's I'm asking him to get me. Number one is Smile, joint two are My Foot and Good Dreams (hang me, but I'm really starting to like this album) and if he can't find those, then pretty much everything goes. I'd still like to take suggestions of the older stuff that works best as an album. I've had them only as mp3's for so long time that I've started to have favourite songs instead of favourite albums...

if you want to look for cds you better to go to a big store, small shops basically have zero pillows stuff.

Actually mare, with their recent popularity increase it's become a good deal easier to find their albums. Far more stores have a specific section for them, and tower records (at least in some locations) consistently has nearly every album from moongold on up. The band scores may be a little bit harder to come by, but still they're pretty easy to get your hands on if you check a music [instrument] store or two, especially one of the larger chains.

Oh, and now is a crap time to be coming over to japan and buying stuff with america-earned money - the dollar is ridiculously weak at the moment. Just in time to hike my second semester's tuition up a nice bloody bit...

Oh wow, that's awesome! I saw that almost every CD shop I went to had a pillows section, but the earliest album I saw was FOTP. That's pretty awesome to hear that they're getting better sales (only reason they'd keep putting out the CDs lol).

Ya, its been amazing/awesome to see the changes just since the first time i came here in 2006 or whenever that was.

Yes, yes, that's good news for me!

He'll be going there in April so I'll have to wait for some time to get the goods... Hope he'll have time go shopping.

The currency of dollar is irrelevant for me as I make my money in relatively strong Euros... And I doubt my daddy will be asking me anything for souvenirs.