Patrick St Michel - Music/Culture - Tokyo

Foreign Correspondence

English - July 04, 2021 07:00 - 1 hour - 41.3 MB - ★★★★★ - 32 ratings
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Previous Episode: Graham Earnshaw - China - Publisher

Next Episode: Bryan Curtis - The Ringer - Sports/Culture

Patrick St. Michel (@mbmelodies) isn’t a professional foreigner, he just plays one on TV. As a freelance music and pop culture journalist, Patrick will take us inside the world of J Pop, K Pop, Japanese baseball and convenience store food. And yes, he’s willing to go see your band play in Thailand on less than 24 hours notice.

Countries featured: Japan, USA, Thailand, South Korea

Publications featured: The Japan Times, The Atlantic, Pitchfork, Make Believe Melodies

Patrick discusses growing up in a town with more horses than people (6:13), founding the publication North by Northwestern in college (12:25), moving to Japan to teach English in a small town (22:52), starting a blog about Japanese music and breaking into journalism (31:04), the promise and peril of writing "Weird Japan" articles (43:28), his "story that got away" seeking to profile a Korean musician trying to become a crossover star (49:07), his profile of Japanese music legend Mariya Takeuchi (56:54), and finally the lightning round (1:03:31) featuring an unexpected trip to Thailand (1:09:27) and Japanese baseball (1:19:11).

Here are links to some of the things we talked about:

Make Believe Melodies blog archive - https://bit.ly/3xgzhDQ

Bagel heads - https://bit.ly/3ycgJom

Patrick's Atlantic story on "Weird Japan" - https://bit.ly/3hALRaa

New Republic dissection of New Yorker's failed Weird Japan article - https://bit.ly/3hb6afA

Patrick's story on Korean Pop conquering Japan - https://bit.ly/3AoZWjQ

CL on wikipedia - https://bit.ly/2Umto9w

Plastic Love by Mariya Takeuchi - https://bit.ly/3xfFHmx

Patrick's profile of Takeuchi - https://bit.ly/2V52weF

Japan Times' Recultured podcast - https://bit.ly/3xfgby0

Dough Boys podcast - https://apple.co/3jFqgA5

The Atlantic's The War on Bollywood - https://bit.ly/3ym6OfS