Going to Europe to understand a feeling I couldn’t shake

Where do I really want to live? Who do I want around me? And what do I want to spend my life doing? A trip through Europe with one of my bandmates when I was 26 gave me the chance to start asking myself those questions.

At the time, I had renovated a house in Minamiboso, Chiba, into a studio, and my bandmates and I were living a life centered around music. We had only just moved in, but we were endlessly curious. We wanted to see the places that had given birth to the music that influenced us, so we decided to head to Europe. I also felt a disconnect between the messages I heard in music I loved, like the Beatles, and the ideas of what was “right” or “normal” that I felt surrounded by in Japan. I wanted to go and find out for myself where that discomfort was coming from.

Feeling the power of the places where music history was made

France, the UK, Germany, the Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, Portugal—we traveled through countries all across Europe, but the UK and Germany left the strongest impression on me.

In the UK, we went to London to visit the world-famous Abbey Road Studios. Everything I saw—the streets, the way people lived—felt refined. I even remember thinking the endless rain was beautiful. In Germany, we went to Berlin’s legendary club Berghain. After making it through the notoriously strict door, I lost all sense of time and immersed myself in the music until morning. Visiting these iconic places in music felt like connecting directly with something that had supported me throughout my life. It was incredibly moving.

Finding freedom on the road—and freeing myself in the process

What inspired me most was the sense of freedom I saw in people across Europe. At festivals in Japan, you often see everyone wearing the same band T-shirt. There, people of every age and style were simply enjoying the music in their own way. Watching people live at their own pace without worrying about how others saw them made me realize how constrained I had been without even noticing it. I started to feel that I could give myself permission to live more freely.

I think what I look for in travel is a kind of synchronicity that you rarely experience in the repetition of everyday life. When I’m traveling, there are always moments that make me think, “I was meant to come here,” or “I was meant to meet this person.” Those seemingly fated encounters have a way of breaking apart the assumptions and obligations that harden around us in daily life.

A freer sensibility, renewed by every new place

After returning to Japan, my bandmates and I started working on new music. We all cared so deeply about it that the process took a long time and wasn’t always easy. Then a massive typhoon hit our studio in Minamiboso, tearing off the roof and leaving the inside in ruins. That brought me back to Tokyo for a while. Around the same time, we reached a natural stopping point with the recording, and I felt as though one chapter of my life had come to an end.

That was when Kyoto suddenly came to mind. Maybe, once again, I was looking for a new source of inspiration.

I live in Kyoto now, making ambient music on my own. The way I work feels perfectly suited to Kyoto’s culture, where the city and nature coexist in just the right balance. When I’m composing by the Kamo River, I sometimes find myself relating to the words of the Beatles’ “Let It Be.” I’ve decided to call my next album WORLD COLLIDE. The sense of freedom I discovered through travel is still very much alive in my everyday life.