Live music in Shibuya
渋谷のライブハウス しぶやのらいぶはうす
From a two-hundred-capacity basement to WWW's former cinema — the small rooms where Japanese bands are found first.
For a second visitLate night · Modern · Local life · Rainy day
Shibuya has more live venues per block than anywhere in Japan, most of them "live houses": basements of two to five hundred people where three or four bands play an evening from six. WWW and WWW X occupy a former art cinema; Club Quattro is on the fourth floor of a shopping building; O-East, O-West and O-nest form a cluster on Dogenzaka; and the jazz survives at JZ Brat and the sixty-year-old coffee-and-jazz kissaten. Tickets are sold in advance online and at convenience stores; a drink ticket is bought at the door. Nobody pushes, everybody claps, and the show ends by ten so people can catch the train.
Don't miss
- A four-band bill at WWW for less than the price of a Western concert ticket
- The politeness of a Japanese crowd — silence between songs, then a roar
- A jazz kissaten afternoon, where talking is discouraged and the speakers are enormous
- Tip
- Look up the venue schedules a week ahead; most sites are in Japanese but the dates and band names are readable.
- Best time
- Any evening from 6.
- Allow
- 180 min
- Station
- Shibuya, Hachiko exit, all within 10 minutes
- Official site — hours, prices, closures
- www-shibuya.jp · Map
Appears in
In this area: Shibuya
Shibuya scramble crossing and Hachiko渋谷スクランブル交差点とハチ公
Three thousand people per green light, a bronze dog who waited ten years, and the best free view from the station's upper floors.
30 min · Shibuya (JR / Ginza / Hanzomon / Fukutoshin lines, Tokyu, Keio), Hachiko exit
Shibuya Sky渋谷スカイ
An open rooftop at 230 metres, with the crossing directly below and Fuji, the Tower and the Skytree around the horizon.
75 min · Shibuya, direct from the station's east side
Nonbei Yokocho and the Shibuya alleysのんべい横丁と渋谷の路地
"Drunkard's Alley" — forty bars of five seats each under the railway, unchanged since 1950, a minute from the crossing.
90 min · Shibuya (JR), Hachiko exit, 2 minutes along the tracks