At the end of last summer, for my YouTube channel, which you should check out if you don’t know about (link in bio) I went down to trusty ol’ Shibuya Station to do a little Live “Vox Pop”, meeting people on the streets of Tokyo and chatting them up about records and music. Just as I was getting set up, with my pop-up double-screen iphone-camera rig, set on a selfie tripod, four very colorful characters, friends who had just arrived in Tokyo from, of all places, Dublin (and Drogheda) Ireland, wandered up to my rig curious about what I was up to. I invited them to help me open this edition of Vox Pop and they politely agreed and what followed was a very fun encounter with Ibi, Kelvyn, Onai, and Tobi.
Their 2 week holiday started from 5 hours earlier when they arrived in the country, and now dressed to the 10s and looking fly AF, smiles from ear-to-ear, this squad was definitely capturing my curiosity and I proceeded to ask them each about their individual bucket list of Japan experiences they hoped tick off while in country. Kelvyn was looking most forward to expanding his culinary horizons with an exploration of the famous Japanese cuisine, filmmaker Tobi expressed interest in Japanese cinema and film history, music-head Onai who’d be playing some line-up DJ sets in Tokyo as keen to get her fashion house on, maybe hitting some design boutiques and vintage digs as well, and finally funky Ibi agreed to everything else everybody had already said, but added wanting to see both Sumo (YES as the tournament was happening just then!) …and JDM Car subculture and wanting to get out on the Shuto highway to see some proper drifting. ALL great ideas that no doubt made for a killer itinerary over the next few weeks.
After a fun chat of mixing it up with this lively crew, and before sending them off, I insisted they share some of their musical tastes and/or recommend an artist or two, Onai offered up Haitian-Canadian music producer, and DJ, Kaytranada, American R&B genius, Alex Isley, and British Soul and hip-hop diva, Sasha Keable. Ibi suggested Atlantic recording artist Kehlani’s grammy-nominated tune, “Folded” (sexy video!)! Tobi and Kelvyn agreed we should check out Irish Rapper Jafaris, and of course hometown heroes, fellow Dublin compatriots, Thin Lizzy!
Finally we signed off with some more fashion talk and some of Miro’s Blue Identity stickers, and well just an overall GREAT vibe of hanging with this crew. Go search the Tokyo Record Style Vox Pop archives for September 16th, 2025 to relive this fun encounter! And thank you Tokyo-Irish Squad! Hope you guys had a great time in Japan! Hope to see you on the next visit!
Until then, more Tokyo Record Style on the way!
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