I make field recordings and quiet music in Kyoto. Most mornings you can find me somewhere in the city with a pair of microphones, listening. This is my sm...
Twenty years of songs, field recordings, and one very awkward job interview. I hadn't opened SoundCloud in years, but earlier this week I fell down one of those late-night internet rabbit holes, the type where you go looking for one thing and end up somewhere else entirely, and I landed back on my old SoundCloud profile . I meant to stay for five minutes but stayed for most of the evening. It…
I run a small thing called Kyoto, in Sound where I take people out for a couple of hours somewhere in Kyoto and hand them a sound recorder and headphones. We walk slowly, we listen, and they go home with the recordings they made of that specific morning. I moved to Kyoto a year ago and noticed pretty quickly that most people visit a city like this to see it. But few slow down enough to hear it.…
Somewhere on this site there's a page I haven't linked to. Good luck finding it. Quick one today, I just really wanted to share this. I spent a few evenings this week building a secret page on this website. It isn't linked anywhere — not in the nav, not in the footer. You have to actually go looking for it, and I don't want to spoil the surprise. I used to love things like this as a kid. Finding a…
A guest wrote about the morning we spent together — and it’s one of the loveliest things anyone has said about what I do. I’m SJF, living in Kyoto and sharing the sounds and small details of this city — from rivers and temple gardens to local festivals. These letters follow my life here, my podcast Kyoto, in Sound , and the Sound Walks I guide, all with the hope of noticing what might otherwise be…
Kyoto, in Sound, Episode 08. A podcast series that invites the residents of this city to talk about their favourite sounds. Hello from a Kyoto on the cusp of summer. No cicadas just yet though. I haven’t posted an episode of the Kyoto, in Sound podcast in a while have I? Last time we visited Kyoto Station and talked about the trains with Charles. This next episode was born out of a chat with my…
A few things from a recent interview. Hello from Kyoto! It’s been a full few weeks here and things are only going to get busier. The city itself is busy at this time of year, and so am I. It’s all good stuff though! Paul Virostek from the website Creative Field Recording got in touch a while back about doing an interview for his website, and it went live last week. He runs one of the more…
An exhibition with Lane Diko Hello again from a humid Kyoto. The air-conditioners around the city are starting to hum and we're in that short lush green stretch before the rainy season arrives, which can't be too far off now. It feels like the right week to send you something about water. Photographer Lane Diko and I spent the last month exhibiting at The Terminal here in Kyoto, as part of an…
On a year of chasing reach, and the decision to stop. This letter was originally published on Substack , May 2026. I'm reposting it here for the archive. Hello from a very warm Kyoto. The cherry blossoms have been and gone for weeks now (I missed the peak this year, somehow!) and the city has settled into that lovely short window of time before the cicadas turn the volume and the pressure up;…
Why you will never see enough of Kyoto — and why that's fine It’s approaching cherry blossom season here, ( check the cherry blossom forecast ) which means Kyoto is currently doing what Kyoto does best each and every spring — being extraordinarily beautiful but also completely overwhelming. Every day I walk past the queues of people with their spreadsheets and saved maps. Soon they’ll be busy…
A video letter about paying attention to the city going about its day. Earlier this week I took my field recorder to Demachiyanagi Shōtengai. It’s a covered shopping street in the north of Kyoto that most tourists walk straight past on their way to somewhere else. Which, as it turns out, is exactly what makes it worth stopping in. This week’s video is my attempt to answer the question I get asked…