CITY COUNTRY CITY — Shimokitazawa’s Analogue Horizon
By Rafi Mercer
New Listing
Venue Name: CITY COUNTRY CITY
Address: Hosozawa Building 4F, 2-12-13 Kitazawa, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo 155-0031, Japan
Website: —
Instagram: @citycountrycityshimokitazawa
Phone: 03-3410-6080
There’s a moment on the walk to Shimokitazawa when Tokyo begins to loosen its collar. The streets narrow, the signage softens, and the sound shifts from neon pop to guitar fuzz leaking from basement doors. Somewhere above one of those record shops, on the fourth floor of a modest concrete building, sits CITY COUNTRY CITY — a café, bar, and record store folded into a single room, where the modern tempo of Tokyo meets the analogue grace of its past.
It’s a small space with large intent. Vinyl lines one wall from floor to ceiling, coffee scents drift across the turntables, and in the centre of it all sits a long communal table that feels almost European — the kind you’d find in Lisbon or Copenhagen — yet grounded in the soft clutter of Japanese precision. The owner, DJ and curator Kenji Takimi, opened the space with a vision: to build a meeting point for sound, conversation, and craft. The result is one of those rare rooms that feels both timeless and tuned to the present moment.
What defines CITY COUNTRY CITY isn’t volume but patience. The system is a purist’s dream — Technics SL-1200 turntables, Luxman amplifiers, Tannoy monitors positioned to spread warmth evenly across the café’s wooden floor. The playlists drift across genres: Brazilian bossa, Tokyo jazz, Balearic reissues, 90s downtempo, the occasional cosmic disco cut when the sun drops behind the rooftops. Each record is chosen with that quiet curatorial care the Japanese have perfected — every track a small act of attention.
By day, the café serves meticulous coffee and light plates — toast with homemade jam, pasta lunches, occasional patisserie drops from local bakers. The food is honest and understated, the kind that doesn’t interrupt the listening. By night, the lights dim and the record racks take over. Locals linger with craft beer or natural wine, flicking through the vinyl stock (all for sale), occasionally pausing to ask what’s playing. The energy is conversational, never performative.
Shimokitazawa has always been Tokyo’s bohemian frontier — vintage stores, live-houses, jazz basements, and art cinemas tucked into the same few square blocks. CITY COUNTRY CITY stands as its analogue heartbeat. It isn’t a reproduction of the 1950s jazz kissa, nor is it a digital concept café chasing hashtags. It sits somewhere in between — a modern listening room with old-mirror thinking: modern enough to feel current, traditional enough to honour the ritual of the needle drop.
You notice this in the way the room moves. There’s no rush between tracks, no sense of playlist logic. Someone flips a record, others pause mid-conversation. The fade between songs becomes a kind of punctuation. The light catches on the record sleeves like the sheen of old glass. The whole experience feels suspended — not nostalgic, but reflective, like memory being replayed through new speakers.
For anyone tracing the constellation of Tokyo Listening Venues, CITY COUNTRY CITY occupies a different latitude from the likes of epulor in Nakameguro or RECOCO Record Café in Shibuya. It’s less sanctuary, more salon — a place where music is shared rather than isolated. If epulor whispers and RECOCO meditates, this one converses. The vinyl shelves double as community; the act of choosing a record becomes a way of introducing yourself.
And yet, beneath that openness lies a precise cultural logic: the Japanese reverence for material sound. The record, the amplifier, the cartridge — each part is treated with affection, even humility. It’s that spirit of preservation that links these modern cafés to their predecessors: the jazz kissa of post-war Tokyo, where listening was an act of quiet defiance. CITY COUNTRY CITY feels like their heir, reframed for an era of playlists and phones, reminding us that the future of music still depends on touch.
When you leave — perhaps after buying a record you didn’t know you needed — the sound seems to follow you down the stairs. Outside, Shimokitazawa feels sharper, its street musicians more alive, the scent of curry and incense thick in the air. You realise that what CITY COUNTRY CITY offers isn’t just coffee or vinyl; it’s calibration. It tunes the listener as much as the system.
If you’re building your own map of where to listen in Tokyo, start here. Then drift towards our Tokyo Listening Venues for a fuller constellation of sound, or search for more listening bars around Japan. Each venue reveals a slightly different reflection of the same idea: that listening — when done well — is an architecture of its own.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters. For more stories from Tracks & Tales, subscribe, or click here to read more.
