Category: Entries with Audio

Early Radio Days

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Back in the summer of 1988, I was living in Juneau, Alaska. I’d just finished working as a page in the Alaska Senate during the five-month legislative session, and had decided to stay in Juneau for the summer before returning to college in the fall.
I was working as a tour guide at the state capitol, but my heart was in the hours I spent at the local public radio station as a news intern. I was doing production work for the local bits of Morning Edition, and trying my hand at reporting. Here’s a story I did:
Juneau Salmon Derby (990kb MP3)
(Not quite sure what’s up with my voice. I think I was searching for a good radio voice. It sounds a little strange, slightly modulated.)
My favorite production task was choosing the short music clips that filled space between story blocks. The station had a huge collection of LPs, and I spent many a late night discovering new music and searching for that perfect clip.

Seiyu Jingle

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The closest grocery is just a block away from my apartment here in Nagano. Although it’s part of the large Seiyu chain, this particular store is kind of crummy. It’s small and the selection isn’t great. The atmosphere is just this side of seedy. I go there often because it’s convenient, but I’m never entirely happy about the experience.

Tops on my list of complaints is the aural cacophony one is assaulted with while shopping. There are at least three different soundtracks playing at once, on top of the constant refrains of “Irasshai mase!” (roughly translated: “welcome to our establishment”) any time you pass an employee. One soundtrack in particular—the loudest of them all—drives me crazy, and I’m including it here so you can decide for yourself whether I’m justifiably irritated or just a crank:

headphonesSeiyu Jingle (350k MP3)

Two days a week at Seiyu—on Tuesdays and Thursdays—the store has ¥100 days, where select merchandise is marked down to the low, low price of ¥100. On these days, the store turns into a sort of video game, where the object is to negotiate one’s way through swarms of tiny grandmothers erratically and veeeerrrrrry slowly pushing their carts down the isles. On these days, the Seiyu Jingle turns into a an apt accompaniment to a cousin of that classic vid game, Frogger.