Micro SX-8000 II or SZ-1

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This is a funny understanding of the Japanese audiophiles you have. Having lived in Japan I have seen listening environments which do match your description (TT on TV etc.). But I have also seen very sophisticated environments, carefully planned and executed - also in big rooms, believe it or not.
And to be honest how many of the listening rooms in the western world are carefully planned and executed?
Maybe it is always the same with our preconceptions we carry around with us. Maybe you think of me as a German going every weekend to a Volksfest in Bavaria, returning home and playing Marschmusik all the time...

Well, - on the other hand (chinese doesn't have that much in common with japanese as it might seem from the western point of view....) there was true audiophile high-end in Nippon VERY different from what we think/thought by looking and listening to Technics and Sansui low-fi ss amplifiers in the late 1970ies.
And western Jazz and romantic european symphonic Classical music was - and is - big in Japan.

There were sophisticated SET-amplifiers, complex super high efficiency horn loudspeakers and big analog turntables widely common in Japan by the late 1970ies.
But - I admit - not in late maoistic China.......

We just didn't noticed back then.
We thought the low-fi components they exported and sold to us were all they knew and could do.
Big mistake.
Most - if not all - what we "discovered" in the 1990ies was imported via France from Japan with a solid 20 year delay.

Thuchan, I could not agree more...
Preconceptions and "experiences" long gone and the result of different conditions no longer apparent, do sometimes cloud the sight and most often do serious block new paths which could lead to much better results.

SET amplifiers, LCR RIAA triode SRPP-preamplifiers, big string driven TTs, complex super sophisticated horn speaker systems were all there in Nippon as far back as the early 1970ies.

The low-fi amplifiers exported and sold to the western hemisphere were not the best they had to offer.
We just thought it was.
In fact the japanese high-end audio scene were 20 years "ahead" of us back then.
All what was "discovered" in the early 1990ies was in fact imported from Japan via France.

Thuchan,
>>> Maybe you think of me as a German going every weekend to a Volksfest in Bavaria, returning home and playing Marschmusik all the time...<<<

Ja, ja, ja, but you will! Weil se Marschmusic is se best, 1,2,3, Gleichschritt, jawohl...

Or are you by any chance into Chinese Opera then?! Badenweiler- und Radezky-March definitely be easier on the ear. (and all from se 12 inch Tonarm - heaven :-)

I guess not having been there leaves one to certain pre-conceptions, true.
Number one of them --- horror of horrors, some huge horns never mind with SET's, in very small rooms. (Chinese Opera what else?)

There was a 2 part presentation in Image HiFi some time ago and the presenter tried pretty hard to be all positive - alas kind of caved in at the end of part two.
He was invited to some of the top HiFi collectors and their sundry friends.
Well, I give him 10/10 for going through it all with ~ 'highish' spirits (Like Jeremy Clarkson driving cars in India... on Clarkson's car world).
It is a few year ago, but I'd say not one single system on display in A'gon could look quite as 'whacked out', for loss of a better term.
So, the TT may go right back up on the TV --- because is were we will hear the ocean...