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 […]
Tokyo Record Style
Michael Warren
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 […]
Tokyo Record Style
Bemsha, Michael, and Cristopher
I’ve made the comparison before of expanding one’s musical horizons by keeping friends who know more about music than you to getting better at tennis by playing with partners who are better than you. However the sport golf is on my mind this morning (maybe because of a Michael Jordan story I heard the other day, of him being not only competitive and wager-prone at basketball, but at golf too). It’s also probably because of the fact that after a bigger group of record-loving homies initially met up at Tent Record earlier this day for “Tokyo Record Style Day”, and […]
![Takahashi San – Moonbeam Records [月光社/Gekkōsha]](https://tokyo.record.style/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/001_BrianScottPeterson_20230924_112A5869-scaled.jpg)
Tokyo Record Style
Takahashi San – Moonbeam Records [月光社/Gekkōsha]
I’ve been visiting Moonbeam Records for many years but it wasn’t until I was facing a little disaster that I had my first earnest conversation with Takahashi san a while back. What had happened was that I had an upcoming DJ event at which I was meant to spin records. At the previous event, I had used my pals’ personal turntable cartridges rather than my own, and of course, as luck would have it, one of the needles broke on my watch and it was only fair that I replace it. Not wishing to face the same dilemma again, I […]
Tokyo Record Style
Ayse and Gunter
Hello, Ayse and Gunter from Cologne, Germany. Ayse is living in Tokyo and currently a student Musashino Art University, or Musabi, and Gunter is visiting her from their hometown. When I spotted them in Coconuts Disk shopping around the bins, the stack of records they were holding was getting bigger and bigger and I thought to myself, “Whoa! Look at that stack! These guys are ballers! Def gonna chase them outside for a Tokyo Record Style photo!” And then when I spied them checking out I followed them out. I chatted Ayse and Gunter just outside in Coconuts has a […]
Tokyo Record Style
Gokky
“Never judge a record by its cover.” An adage updated for the modern age. As I came around the corner past the famous Suzunari Gekijo Theatre, made famous for being about as far off Broadway as you can get, and over the old tracks of the now-underground Odakuyu line, where we Shimokitazawans used to wait for sometimes 15 minutes at a time for all the local, semi-express, commuter, and double-decker Romance Car train to pass, and then through the once-iconic-but-now-a-bit-sterilized gate of “Ichi-Ban-Gai”, the “#1 Street”, right in front of Jet Set Records, I spotted a pair of full-sleeve tattoos […]
Tokyo Record Style
Jim O’Connell
Somebody with many interests and creative pursuits is called a “Multipotentialite”. Somebody with knowledge that spans a substantial number of subjects is called a “Polymath”. Somebody who has wide interests and is an expert in several areas is called a “Renaissance Man.” Somebody who is competent in many endeavors, but excels in none of them is called a “Pantologist” or a “Jack of All Trades.” Jim is all of these things but also more than all of them. I’ve been searching for a way to describe one of my oldest, dearest, closest friends, the godfather of my first kid, my […]
Tokyo Record Style
Johnny and Bora
I just keep meeting the absolutely coolest and nicest people in the world on this project. What a brilliant little way to interact with the world that I seem to have just stumbled into. Though every person I meet is unique with totally different taste in music, it kinda feels like I keep meeting members of a sorta Secret Society, “The Illuminadio”, “Knights of the Turntable”, “Order of the Black Circle”, “The Fellowship of the Ringwear”, the “Fraternal Order of Record Collectors” and these two knew the secret handshake. As soon as I started speaking Japanese, I could sense that […]
Tokyo Record Style
Aaron Hamby
While visiting family back in my hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, Tokyo Record Style will only temporarily be recognized as “Tulsa Record Style” 🙂 Exploring the Tulsa Record stores has been interesting and enlightening. Busy with family activities, I haven’t had time to visit them all but I did manage to spend half a day running around to various locations. At Josey Records, on Historic Route 66, I spotted Aaron having just wrapped up a dig in a giant pile of 45s that I was coming upon. “They’re all yours,” he said with a friendly smile, having no doubt painstakingly […]