THE RENTALS

A Japanese business model that never made its bones in America is CD rental.

Many of the large media stores in Japan offer this service, and have for at least the last 20 years or so.

It costs about $2 a pop to rent a disc for a day. When we were there, I grabbed 5 of the Beatles remasters that I had not bought, ripped them losslessly, and returned them the next day.

The selection of Western music skewed pretty heavily to classic rock, with some occasional veins of weirdness, but it's a good way to round out your catalog a bit.