Meet sweet Tian Tian from Hangzhou, near Shanghai visiting Tokyo for the first time, on a 15-day tour of Japan where she is making up her itinerary on a day-by-day basis. This is almost exactly how I started my life in Japan, it was just meant to be a short 2 week stay, but it has turned out to be much more permanent than I ever imagined, actually 20 years exactly in 4 days. Tian Tian spoke in such perfect American English and just had a sorta California vibe about her that I suspected that she may have spent some […]

Sending a giant thank you out to all who came to share an afternoon and early evening of music appreciation and record-loving at Top 5 Records – Volume 15 “On the Road Again”. After an 8-month hiatus we found an amazing new home at Bar Kurage adjacent Mustard Hotel in Reload Shimokitazawa. This new space, run by the supremely cool and contagiously fun Wataru san and the lovely and smiley Haruka, made for a wonderful event. It’s a beautifully designed bar, stocked with all kinds of premium flowing deliciousness, and has an outrageously nice DJ rig, replete with brand spanking […]

Nice to meet you Kotaro, who I caught up with at Organic Music as our Tokyo Record Style Day Volume 9 event wound down and as the main affair (OM’s 5th Anniversary) began. Kotaro was among the line-up of DJs who would be spinning records from 5pm and onwards and likely late into the evening. His unique, funky, and cool look caught attention and we had a nice chat outside the shop before his set, where I began to notice a few more details of his ensemble, including his gold wire rimmed Lennon glasses, matching gold ring and watch, an […]

Despite only brandishing a sticker from the event that Tokyo Record Style Day Vol. 9 piggy-backed on, Physical Store (Organic Music + Planet Baby)’s 5th Anniversary and neighbor Bar Otonari’s 1st Anniversary, it’s great to see long-time support friend of Tokyo Record Style (and other related photography projects), ex Disk Union staff, and reggae music aficionado Yusya (AKA bangsadali) from Indonesia and Illinois back on the on the stream! As much as we’d all like to, we can’t score record EVERY time we go to the record store; sometimes you strike out. But considering everybody CAME out, proving that Tokyo […]

Supremely cool Marcus showed up at Tokyo Record Style Day Volume 9 with his lovely Maki san, who I had never met before. Are these two just not coolest? I mean, both dressed in all black, Marcus with a fashionably utilitarian jacket, perhaps a black version of street fashion photographer Bill Cunningham’s iconic blue French workers jacket, coupled with some finely pressed high-voltage SLACKS, pink coral-colored (but subtle) geometric-patterned silk(?) socks, replete with some chunky black tasseled loafers. As for accessories, all understated, the sublimely unassuming Minolta CLE (a Toyota Crown Super Deluxe exterior and interior, but with a Porsche […]

Shimizu san is making his 3rd or 4th appearance on TRS and he’s become quite a good friend over the course of this project and I feel really grateful that connections like this have been made through Tokyo Record Style. As a real connoisseur of all kinds and music, and with a wide spectrum of taste, I wasn’t surprised he turned up for Tokyo Record Style Day Volume 9 at Organic Music, known for an especially eclectic selection of music, curated by the knowledgeable Chee Shimizu (coincidentally ALSO a Shimizu san, perhaps a distant cousin.) On this particular day, Shimizu […]

Author recognizes Author! Not sure how much I am allowed to disclose on this one cuz I know my pal, Professor Christopher Bondy, pictured here, is a fairly private fellow. He always pulls a “Home Improvement’s Wilson” on me in past Tokyo Record Style appearances, just poking his head up behind his featured purchase, though I’ve been lucky to capture his handsome mug more than once. Whether I’m allowed to disclose his own literary credits (see comments), we’ll find out together, if I end up eating my words and begging for his forgiveness after writing this. About Christopher: Besides being […]

Tokyo Record Style Day Vol. 8 – Physical Store – Organic Music + Planet Baby A very big thank you to all who came out for another edition of Tokyo Record Style – Volume 9 Physical Store – Organic Music + Planet Baby. What a great excuse it is to see your friends, visit a new record store, listen to some tunes, and snap some photos! I wanna send a special shout out of gratitude to Author, DJ, Musicologist, Chee Shimizu of Organic Music for and the Kanako from Planet Baby for allow us to basically commandeer the shop for […]

Hey Record-loving homies! I finally get to introduce you to lovely Amy with whom I shared a long and friendly conversation in the shelter of The Suzunari’s Yokocho where we hid out from the sudden downpour, chatting about her music, fashion, traveling, rock climbing, and an architecture internship that brought her to Tokyo for an extended stay from Singapore where she lives and studies. Sidenote: I tend to keep Tokyo Record Style completely free from work-related talk only so as to have a place to focus completely on play, freedom, and fun. Having said that, I have blessings to count […]

More slacker style on TRS. Love it! Here’s the thing about slacker style – the whole point of it is two-fold: First to convey a sense of indifference, disaffectedness, unconcerned nonchalance. Two: to actually HAVE indifference, disaffectedness, unconcerned nonchalance, cuz really, who CAN be bothered. But you see, it is a bit a paradox, cuz on one hand it requires much thoughtful consideration, such as how holey or stained can jeans be before they’re trying to hard, how tattered or ironic can a graphic t-shirt or trucker hat be before it’s makes fun of itself, at one time of day […]

You’ve seen the memes of Gen X’ers telling both Boomers and Millennials to get over themselves and get on with it, and about them being the generation who despite being raised by the TV are more resourceful, educated, balanced, and indifferent to the momentary wanes of society, which has perhaps developed within them a type of insolence and insubordination that only fellow members of their generation find distinctive, familiar, and well, charming. Unfocused intellectual slacker recognizes unfocused intellectual slacker. So during my last visit to Like a Fool Records, it was this familiarity apparent when I met Yoichi, pictured here, […]

Being blind-sided by a new artist, by a new band, by a new landscape of sound …what a truly great feeling. Like a baptism of sonic rhapsody, purifying your attention, distilling your conscience, the sensation can wash over you like a shamanic wave, transfixing all your senses, illuminating your perceptions, calming your spirit, and soothing your soul. Ah, you’ve arrived at a new place of musical appreciation! Congratulations! A new band just found its way to your heart, planting a seed of curiosity for more, an interest to go immediately deeper, a smile on your face, a surprised widening of […]

Good grief, where do I start with this one. Freddy is my oldest record-loving homie, my blow-our-paycheck-at-the-record-store-ON-payday partner-in-crime, the guy to whom I left my entire collection to when I moved to Japan and who every-few-of-those-early-years-of-living-here, I would return to and expatriate some of my records little-by-little until I had rudely raided virtually all I could (Sorry Fred). Because he was from Chicago and tapped into the underground scene, and because he had about 10 years on me, he knew 5-10 psych, garage, punk, post-punk, new-wave, and no-wave artists for every Top 40 or Classic Rock artist I knew. Some […]

Miyazaki’s Spirited Away is hands down one of my favorite movies of all time. It’s a powerful and beautiful story about coming of age, poetically and whimsically told, a journey simultaneously through adolescence and a mythical world, stunningly animated in vivid and imaginative Ghibli fashion, that somehow all makes perfect sense while making no sense at all. The protagonist Chihiro finds herself passing through a gate into the magical world of the “kami” (the gods) and loses both her parents and nearly her own identity in the process. She must overcome the challenges she faces while working in a bath […]

Venturing into some potentially dangerous territory here: Women and Vinyl. This is not a topic that particularly interests me but I heard something in passing that had me scratching my head and won’t seem to leave my thoughts. It was the question of whether men buy records to impress women, and if a record collection ever got a guy laid. It was posed by a sassy young lass, clumsily but endearingly unaware of how to wield her newly discovered insouciance, addressing a bunch of middle aged men old enough to have been around the block a few times. She got […]

If you’re not subscribed to my YouTube channel, please check out Tokyo Record Style! I’ve just been documenting random record musings, including the occasional visit to cool record shops in Tokyo (Link here). Before recording anything in a shop, I like to make sure it’s ok with owners and clerks and set up a situation where I can pitch what I want to do, give them a chance to review it, then come back at a later date to record so nobody feels they are being put on-the-spot. …So I pass Jet Set Records in Shimokitazawa nearly every day on […]

For this edition of Tokyo Record Style I met some South Korean record collectors from the quite famous K-Indie / K-Pop band, “Lucy”, who were strolling down the chochin-illuminated Miyashita Park izakaya promenade while I was walking up it. They were coming from Tower Records where they had each scored an album during an off-night of their current Japan Tour. I stopped and quickly pitched them the Tokyo Record Style concept and asked if they might be willing to be photographed, and they were very happy and friendly to oblige. Not realizing I was speaking to a renown group of […]

Shibuya Scramble (“The busiest Intersection in the world”) has been a “monotonously fun” local to people-watch and to make street photos over the years. Yes, it’s too obvious, too mobbed, too gawky, too nauseating at times if you let it be, but c’mon admit it, it’s still got its charm after all this time. I can always vicariously experience it all new again through other people’s eyes who are seeing it for the first time, and it changes frequently enough (read: every two and a half minutes) to keep your interest. If nothing else, its purest transience can’t help but […]

Before my kids came along, I admit I spent far too many late nights in Shimokitazawa back alley tachinomi bars, one in particular called Namazu, or Catfish, which was a little community of artists, poets, musicians, dancers and performers of all varieties. Every night about 20-30 people would gather in a space that could hold about 6 and we would drink $3 beers, stumble through barely understandable conversations, laugh and cackle, play guitar and sing til the wee hours of the night. Every now and again, we would impress ourselves with a little camping outing, a mini-festival, or even a […]

Top 5 Records Returns!Shimokitazawa!! Welcome to Season 3 of “Top 5 Records” where music-loving pals and DJs Michael Warren (@themichaelwarren), “bemsha” Tatsuo Fukutomi (@bemsha_swing), and “Zebrio” Brian Scott Peterson (@zebrio), invite their friends to an afternoon and evening of playing records and counting down their Top 5 Records on various themes! We welcome two guest DJs Miho (@miho.jonishi) and Kae (@karleksounds) The Season 3 – Episode 1 theme is “On the Road Again” – songs and albums that relate to being, traveling, traversing, trans-continental-ing and just being on the move! It will be up to our DJ’s to share how […]

Hey record-loving friends, Happy Father’s Day and hope you’re having a nice weekend ! It’s a good reminder of what I put people through for Tokyo Record Style to get in front of the camera myself, this time from Tokyo Record Style Day Volume 8 at Garageville in Tstujigaoka several weeks back. On this day I scored a reggae and rocksteady compilation that I had been eye-balling for a while, with a couple of early Wailers tunes on it including their version of Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone. Plus the cover features a really old photo of Bob, Bunny, […]

Tucked away in the quiet shopping side-street of sleepy Tsutsujigaoka on the western side of Tokyo, Garageville stands as a testament that Tokyo’s vibrant record culture exists even in places you might not expect it. The man, woman, and cats behind this unique record shop and craft-beer/snack-bar, Yasu, Junko, Goma, and Kinoko (who’ve been featured on TRS multiple times) have cultivated a space that is much more than a place to buy music – it’s a kind of clubhouse for both the vinyl-loving deep-diggers and casual hanger-outers, alike. I’ve written about Garageville a number of times and was thinking how […]

This is a post I have been looking forward to for a long time, of my Arizona-sometimes-Tokyo pal Bryce Suzuki who I’m not entirely sure how I know or how far back our friendship goes. He, being an avid and very talented street photographer, tells me that our mutual friend and iconic photographer (and Tokyo Camera Style originator), John Sypal put me on his radar, however everytime I look at Bryce’s name or see his amazing Instagram feed, which I highly encourage you to check out and follow, I feel like we might go much, much further back, perhaps even […]

Pal, peer, Penguin Cafe Orchestra appreciator, protocol polyglot, personal confidant, compatriot, collaborator, fellow expat, record-shopping partner, brother-in-Phish, Dog Log podcast co-host, Top 5 Records accomplice, and Tokyo Record Style repeater #1, my bud, THE Michael Warren. I was initially thinking “what do you say about somebody who you have already said everything about” but then as I started writing, I realized how easy it is to keep sharing about the things and people you really love, which is what Michael and I endless wax and wane about nearly every other day, catching up for a short “Dog Log” – our oddly […]

You might not think Tokyo as the melting of humanity that is New York, London, or Sydney, but if this city’s population is any reflection whatsoever of the diversity of my circle of friends, which I think it HAS to be, particularly if you count all the people regularly and now repeatedly year-after-year coming through, I’m convinced very much that, at least if you go a layer deeper, Tokyo is one of the most international cities in the world. Scoff at that if you must, and yes, I admit that may be statistically highly inaccurate, but that’s my perspective. That’s […]

Going out on a limb here. The Japanese concept that Steve Jobs was so interested in is called “Kaizen” – “continual improvement” that emphasizes small, incremental changes that lead to better efficiency, higher quality, better performance while forging a culture of collaborative team effort. Then there is a lesser known word, ”Kairyo Bunka” 改良文化 – “the culture of improvement” that encapsulates the notion continually refining and enhancing aspects of culture, technology, and everyday life while incorporating and improving upon external influences, often surpassing the originals, Finally you often encounter this concept of “Parallel Imports” here, though not unique to Japan: […]

Globe-trotting Bridget I caught up with on Organ Zaka, the street that leads you from Tower Records up to Parco (where Disk Union is) and back down to the HMV Shibuya. She was carrying the iconic Tower Vinyl bag having just scored a record, not for herself but for her significant other who is a huge Oasis fan (and what do you buy an Oasis fan who might already have everything? Their latest offering a 3-disc set “Live from Knebworth 1996” where 250,000 Oasis fans converged to two record breaking, era-defining shows marking the “pinnacle of the band’s success and […]

I was recently invited on a photowalk by my friends Keiko Mizuno and Tokyo Record Style regular, Tatsuo Fukutomi AKA bemsha. Keiko is an avid Lomo  LC-A+ camera user, the camera that birthed the Lomographic Society, and she joined my PhotoPeace photo walk and gallery hop two summers ago. Coming back to Tokyo all the way from Gifu, she and bemsha organized this photo around the backstreets of Harajuku-Jingumae with visits to a couple of bookstores plus a coffee break at cool Watarium. Their photo walk was based on them “Tokimeki” which mean the the spark one feels in their […]

This is a fun one. For a light-hearted work-related project, we were celebrating International Dinosaur Day (who knew?) and were looking across the interwebs for dinosaur/monster/Godzilla-themed projects to recruit to be involved when I happened to stumble across Italian Stoner Rockers, “Godzilla Was Too Drunk To Destroy Tokyo” AKA GWTDTDT who would be, for the first time, in their career, visiting Tokyo from Finale Ligure, near Genova where they are based, and touring Japan, with a night off to join our event, which they did, presenting this story of their band and their sonic creation of “heavy psych monster fuzz […]

Record collecting friends! Brian here, representing Tokyo Record Style!! Announcing “Tokyo Record Style Day – Volume 9 – ShimoIgusa!!” Join us for another afternoon of crate-digging with homies in local Tokyo neighborhoods, where gems and grails await us in clusters of awesome record shops! Score LPs, EPs, 10”s or CDs! Tapes? Reel-to-reels? 8-Tracks? We don’t judge! Just come celebrate your love for physical media and good ‘ol record shop culture! Pose for a photograph in your styley-est digs and with your Record Store scores, and make your mark on Tokyo Record Style!! Organic Music + Planet Baby are side-by-side select […]