Japan Live

I've been listening to a lot of classical. Saturday, the NHK orchestra was performing one of my recent favorite pieces, Sibelius's 2...

2007 was a good year. #10. Texas Pandaa Days Maybe it's not the best idea to call this album one of my favorite of 2007 considering it c...

I'm putting together my top 10 favorite Japanese albums list for 2007, which should be done in the next few days. In the meantime... I ...

Mix Market is back! Well...actually, they returned to action at the end of 2006... But only in the last few months has this female vocal in...

I'm probably not the best guy to recommend where to buy Japanese music—99% of my CDs are purchased at the Tower Records in Shibuya... Bu...

Advantage Lucy has long had a devoted following, myself firmly in its ranks, and as I listened to them play their last show of the year at ...

It took me three laps around a dark bar alley in Sangenjyaya before I found the cafe I was looking for, called Rain on the Roof . A few more...

1. I've been getting into the music of pop-ska-rockers Mix Market , including their latest album, Shiawase no Elephant ('elephant o...

Does Asakusa Jinta + pro wrestling = an ideal Sunday evening? I wasn't sure, but an event featuring one of Japan's best bands as w...

I’m in LA—and reading the 50th issue of Giant Robot magazine here, I made a realization— Which is this: When I was growing up in LA, Japan,...

A few years ago I wrote a post that asked what ever happened to Teeny Frahoop, a brilliant girl rock band that disappeared after releasing ...

A tearful Tokyo evening: at Shibuya station a high school girl was consoling her weeping friend; further down a bawling tot was tugging at ...

If band names were accurate, Japan's Music From The Mars would be called something like Music From New York Circa 1974 because they ar...

My favorite J-music album so far this year is 4 Bonjour's Parties' debut effort, pigments drift down to the brook , a work that...

“You've come at exactly the wrong time!” Ian said to me as I stepped in late to the event he'd organized. “Right before this was a g...

A demonic anime trio (one of them holding a bloody ax, and wearing a guilty, zigzagged smile). A Satanic conjurer, unholy light flashing fro...

That was fast. Tickets for the latest live tour of Tokyo Incidents (a.k.a. Tokyo Jihen), Shiina Ringo's band, went on sale on the 29th, ...

Japanese hip hop is an enigma. The first mystery is why it became big in the first place. When listening to U.S. hip hop records, most Japan...

One wish I have about the Tokyo music scene: I'd like more events to be organized at unusual venues, rather than at the same old live ho...

Went to the Mono and Envy show at the Ebisu Liquid Room last night to try to expand my musical horizons a bit... but my effort flopped. B...