Sonic Japan: Sounds of sport and leisure

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Toy Store - Yamashiroya - in Ueno
Night time toy shopping in Ueno - Yamashiroya - a multistory shop (2018/03/29)
More:Tokyo
Music Lesson
Sometimes cafes feature communal spaces such as this shop in the suburbs of Kyoto. You can hear inside a teacher is giving a Japanese flute (fue) lesson to patrons. (2016/10/26)
More:Kyoto
Osaka Inside Out
A meta-mix of collectively-gathered soundscape recordings throughout Osaka c. 2007 (2007/07/01)
More:Osaka

Latest posts

Osaka Inside Out

Fri Dec 23 2016 by David Novak

This mix draws from a field recording project undertaken in July 2007 with several collaborators from around the city of Osaka, in the Kansai region of western Honshu, Japan. I asked my friends and colleagues to bring me to places that sounded most like Osaka and the experience of living...>>

Embodied Senses in Reflection

Fri Jul 29 2016 by Tamara Kohn

I’ve recently returned to Melbourne from the 2016 Association of Social Anthropologists conference at the University of Durham, UK. It was a nostalgic visit for me. I had lived in Durham and had taught at that University for 14 years, from 1992-2006. This first visit back to the...>>

Sweeping Silence

Fri Apr 01 2016 by Tamara Kohn

Four of us awoke at 5:30am, before dawn, and silently carried brooms from the dojo grounds down the drive and over the road to the Aiki Shrine. Sweeping the large 'dry' gravel garden in front of the shrine or the leaves under the trees is part of any live-in student's...>>

本部で道主との朝の稽古 Hombu Dojo, Morning class with the Doshu

Fri May 30 2014 by Tamara Kohn
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京都での木剣稽古 Bokken training in Kyoto

Fri May 30 2014 by Tamara Kohn
This is a recording made in Yoko Okamoto Sensei’s aikido dojo in Kyoto during a morning ‘weapons’ class taught by Yoko’s American husband, Chris (pictured above). The dojo is in Kamigyo-ku, in an area of tiny residential streets and laneways.>>

溝前町の合気道所 Aikido Kyoto in Mizomae-cho

Fri May 30 2014 by Tamara Kohn
Here you hear the rigorous training sounds of aikido in a class taught by Yoko Okamoto Sensei, the chief instructor at Aikido Kyoto. You can hear the sound of the uke (receiving partner) hitting the mat to break a fall after being thrown by tori (the person practicing the throwing technique).>>

岩間の合氣神社で掻く音 Raking the Aiki Shrine in Iwama

Fri May 23 2014 by Tamara Kohn
The live-in students at Iwama dojo wake at 5am every morning in the dark and very quietly get dressed, grab narrow-pronged bamboo rakes known as kumade (pictured above) and walk in silence from the dojo on the gravel driveway to the small road and the Shrine area on the other side. You hear the sound of our footsteps in the first recording - loud crunching noises that pierce the quiet pre-dawn.>>

上野公園での野球試合 An amateur baseball match at Ueno Park

Wed May 07 2014 by Thomas Baudinette
Baseball is the most popular spectator sport in Japan and is also one of the most popular amateur sports- almost every school and university in Japan has it's baseball team(s). Even some large (and smaller) companies organise baseball competitions amongst their employees and against their competitors, with young (male) members of staff invited to represent the company on the diamond.>>

本部道場での合気道稽古 Aikido training at Hombu Dojo

Tue Apr 15 2014 by Tamara Kohn
In this recording at Hombu dojo, the world headquarters of the Aikikai Foundation, during a late afternoon class, approximately 30 students are practicing in pairs and you hear the sound of their bodies moving and the slapping of the mats to break their falls. Then they stop, dash to the edges to kneel in seiza facing the centre, and the Sensei (teacher) demonstrates a technique with one uke (receiving partner) while all the students observe.>>

岩間道場での合気道稽古 Iwama Dojo Aikido Training

Tue Apr 15 2014 by Tamara Kohn
In this recording you hear the sound of aikido training in the Ibaraki Dojo in Iwama, a small farming town 100km north-east of Tokyo. This dojo (place of practice) in Iwama has been a very important site in aikido's short history, as it was built by the founder of aikido, Morihei Ueshiba, and he lived there from 1942 until his death in 1969.>>