The World Is Listening
Tracks & Tales is now available in English, Japanese, and Chinese.
I didn't set out to build something international.
I set out to find rooms where music was treated with the seriousness it deserved — bars and kissaten and listening spaces where someone had made a decision about sound before anyone walked through the door. The fact that those rooms exist in Osaka and Shanghai and Kyoto as readily as they do in Lisbon or Copenhagen or Madrid was always the point. It just took a while for the platform to catch up.
As of today, Tracks & Tales is available to read in English, Japanese, and Chinese.
That sentence is still settling for me. One hundred and sixty days ago this was a single voice writing about a single idea. Now the guide that started with a question — where does music actually sound right? — is asking it in three languages, across three writing systems, on three continents.
The Japanese version matters to me in a particular way. Kissaten culture — the art of the listening café — is one of the great contributions to the history of intentional sound. The idea that a room could be built around a record, that a listener could sit in silence and simply hear, didn't start in Tokyo, but it was perfected there. You feel it in every room — from P.M.SOUNDS on Kiyamachi in Kyoto to the warm, convivial bars of Fukuoka — the same unhurried principle at the heart of each: music first, everything else second. That Tracks & Tales now exists in Japanese feels less like translation and more like return.
The Chinese version is a door I hadn't fully imagined opening. But the listening bars emerging across Shanghai are among the most architecturally considered spaces I've encountered anywhere in the guide — rooms that hold fidelity and velocity in the same breath, where a Zhou Xuan classic can drift into Brian Eno without anyone questioning the logic. There is something happening there. It deserves proper attention, in the right language.
English remains the mother tongue of Tracks & Tales — the language the essays were first thought in, the register that carries the voice. But a guide to the world's listening rooms that only spoke one language was always going to miss something.
Now, a little less.
FAQ
How do I read Tracks & Tales in Japanese or Chinese? Use the language selector at the top of any page on tracksandtales.co — toggle between EN, JA, and ZH.
Does the full site translate, including city guides and essays? Yes. The translation applies across the platform, so city guides, The Daily, and listening album pages are all accessible in your chosen language.
Which cities are covered in the Japanese and Chinese editions? All of them. The full Tracks & Tales atlas — 50+ cities including Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Fukuoka, Shanghai and beyond — is available in all three languages.
What is The Listening Club? The Listening Club is the membership community at the heart of Tracks & Tales — monthly album sessions, full platform access, and city guides across 151 countries. Founding membership is open now.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters. For more stories from Tracks & Tales, subscribe or click here to read more.
