About Us
We are an informative podcast focusing on the Japanese music industry. Our main mission is to introduce various popular Japanese music and artist to the world through our discussion of all things J-Pop, from news to our own personal thoughts and favorites. We are no experts by any means, but we want to use this podcast to serve as a basis from which you can possibly develop a newfound interest in or deeper love for Japanese music.
Luna
My stage name is Luna. I am from the Midwest (a very boring part of the US). I've studied Japanese since freshman year in college (I self-studied before that). I studied in Japan in 2014, when I met Ken and Grey. In Japan, I got to see two indie Japanese R&B concerts, one of them one of my top favorite singers, JASMINE. I have a minor in Japanese and a major in business. Unfortunately in my current two jobs I don't get to utilize my Japanese skills.
My love for Japanese music began in high school, around 2005. The first artists I ever heard were Koda Kumi, Ayumi Hamasaki, BoA, Utada Hikaru, and melody. Pretty sure those are most people's firsts, besides melody. From there, I branched out to explore many types of Japanese music over the years. It's difficult to say who my favorite artists are, as I have many that I follow. I have a HUGE collection of Japanese music CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays. I love physical media, so I'm pretty proud of my J-pop collection. Some of my favorite J-pop artists, besides what I mentioned above, are Miliyah Kato, Kana Nishino, miwa, JASMINE, Hiromi, m-flo, SCANDAL, Thelma Aoyama, and DOUBLE. I have more, but I'm sure you'll hear me mention those as we continue our podcast. Other hobbies and interests I have include movies, anime, and my cat. I am a huge horror movie fanatic and do a horror podcast called "We Need to Talk About Horror". I am more of a guest on this podcast as we switch between six of us (we have four at a time usually). I also love anime. I have a pretty big anime collection. So when I'm not watching movies, I'm watching anime. My favorite anime is Fullmetal Alchemist. I have an Instagram page with all of my physical media (@nerdycollectorluna). If you are interested in any of these, you can follow what I am watching. I also post cat photos occasionally. I have a Maine Coon/Persian mix named Mittens. She's my big princess.
Gray
When I was in 6th grade, I had a friend who was super into Dragonball Z. It was thanks to him that I got into anime because he kept going on about how awesome the show was. So, one day I decided to check it out and that was the starting point for my love of anime. Anime has this awesome way of introducing you to Japanese music.
Inuyasha was the first anime that really made me fall in love with Japanese music; the opening and ending themes were amazing and I would talk to my school friends about the new songs as they changed. When I was a senor in high school I purchased the opening and ending collection for around $50.
Over the years, though, I was ignorant of a lot of the music that was out there and I grew up in a small country town, so my resources were lacking. In 2014, however, I was super fortunate to go to Japan--something I had wanted for so long. It was on this trip that I met Luna and Ken. We've been friends ever since.
For years we talked in a group chat and I had known how knowledgeable both Ken and Luna were of various artists, so back in November I reached out to Luna about starting up a show (also because she was already experienced with another show). It was quite a day. Soon after, I reached out to Ken, and now here we are. I look in wonder at how far we've come but I know how far we still have yet to go.
I enjoy various styles of music. I grew up on 80s and 70s rock so I do tend to favor music with that style of sound. Metal is really a hit or miss for me and I love hip hop, but straight gangster rap is hard for me to enjoy. And usually, if the song is upbeat, well, I'll probably love it anyway. Some of my favorite groups are Daichi Miura, Asian Kung Fu Generation, Scandal, Bradio, Miho Fukuhara, and Little Glee Monster.
Ken
I guess you could say that my interest in the Japanese language started when I was very young from hearing a friend of mine speaking with his family in Japanese. I thought it was very cool. Having learned another language myself and being a huge JRPG fan, I felt that I should start taking Japanese lessons, which actually didn’t happen until I was in high school. However, my first real introduction to Japanese music came from that very same friend: we would watch Digimon in Japanese before the dub of the “Dark Masters” arc even came out. I thought the opening and digivolution music was so amazing at the time that even though I didn’t understand it I was hooked.
When I was in high school, to kill time I would go to the local mall. In this mall there was a store that would sell used Japanese CDs and manga. So I would go every week just to look at CDs and read manga; from this, I'd learn more about the language. From then on I would learn just a small amount of Japanese from artists like M-flo, BoA, UVERworld, and ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION. Around that time I’d only listen to around five artists, but I'd listen to them pretty religiously. Then, when I was in college, the magical thing called the internet took off and blew my mind with Japanese music. This introduced me to ARASHI, Exile, and AKB48, among others.
During this time I would watch variety shows and would learn off of that, which benefited me in the long run (various artists would be featured on these shows). During that time I would also go to Japan yearly starting from 2010, which then turned into bi-annual. Then, in 2013, I got the opportunity to study abroad in Japan, which helped blow my Japanese music knowledge lid wide open; I would go to a bunch of indie shows and meet a bunch of other like-minded people that were into the same bands. I also met Luna and Gray through school during this period. I kept in touch with them and a couple of others throughout the years and when I was asked by Gray to do the podcast it was an immediate yes.
When I'm not podcasting I'm usually playing Final Fantasy 14 or the Yakuza games. If I'm not playing games I'm usually watching wrestling or reading comics.
Rentford
Hey, Rentford the “part-timer” here. My interest in Japanese music all started when I was a member of my high school’s varsity golf team. One of the senior members on the team was a quirky, yet oddly charismatic fellow, but the story goes: normally for our practice sessions, our coach would drive us in the school’s bus to the driving range right after class got out. However, one day we weren’t able to use the bus and had to each carpool separately with whoever had a car to drive. My senior teammate who I mentioned earlier had a car so he volunteered to take me to the driving range. Upon him starting the ignition, I was immediately surprised by the Japanese language, pop music that started pouring out of the car stereo. Now let me backtrack a bit. I’m a Japanese-American, but at the time I neither spoke the language (I learned it on my own later in college), nor did I have any experience listening to the likes of “J-Pop”. I was really into exploring different genres as the drummer for an indie band that I had formed with my friends and as a young musician, naively thought that I knew everything about music until that very moment (I now realize that I don’t know anything). Needless to say, I was instantly intrigued by how fresh and different everything sounded to me, which led me spiraling down the rabbit hole, trying to find out as much as I could about this new “genre” of music upon returning home from practice that day. 10 years later and here I am writing to you about my favorite Japanese music finds that I come across.
A few of my all-time favorite Japanese artists includes: KIRINJI, Shiina Ringo, Shibata Satoko, toe, Boris, Awesome City Club, Coaltar of the Deepers, GUIRO, Casiopea, cinema staff, Fishmans, Asian Kung-fu Generation, and Plastic Tree. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t french press my coffee, nor am I a vegan (all of those things are great though!). I also don’t know anything about craft beer or whiskey. I do however occasionally wear plaid, am really into competitive Smash Bros. and music gear, and am casually into BanG Dream!.
If you’re curious about what I’ve been listening to lately, you can check out my last.fm here and my RYM here. Also feel free to follow me on Twitter @rentfordd.