The Untold Story of Sound House’s Founding Episode 1: First Encounter with Narita, a Place I Had No Connection to

I always find it interesting to look back at history. I am still amazed at the series of events that happened just before the birth of Sound House, especially when shocking transitions happened one after another in my life 30 years ago. Sometimes things you can’t even believe just kept happening. Whether you believe it or not, the outcome that followed should be enough proof.

I, as a man who was born and raised in Tokyo, suddenly decided to go to Narita in January of 1992 even though I had no connection to the place. I went there only because I saw myself going there in a vision. I sometimes see these kinds of visions when my spiritual eye is sharpened. Is this what we call heavenly guidance? There was no other reason for me to go to Narita. All I could think was, “I have to go to Narita.”

However, I did not have any plans. I had no job at the time, and I remember that I just loaded my golden retriever Mitchie and my guitar into my old Honda Accord, and then drove to the unknown town of Narita without looking back. My initial goal was to find a mountain where I could pray like Mount Kōya in Narita. For some reason, I believed that the place where I could find solace was in the mountains, so I traveled around with Mitchie in search of a place to pray on the mountain. However, after a few days, I found out that there were no mountains in Narita. What a surprise! There was no Google Maps at the time, so I was just moving around based on my sense of geography. There was no way I could have known without looking around first. Seeing is believing.

However, instead of a mountain, I found a place called Narita Onsen, a natural hot spring located in the countryside surrounded by rice fields, deep in Shimousa Manzaki area along Lake Inba-numa, on the outskirts of Narita. The Narita Onsen was about to go out of business and was terribly run down. The bathtub was only big enough for four or five people and the building looked like it was about to collapse since it was built in the 1950’s. Later I found out that this Narita Onsen was actually once featured in magazines and other media, and it was famous across the nation! I doubted how such a run-down bath house could ever be in the limelight, but I felt my expectations growing bigger for this unknown town, Narita. (To be continued in Episode 2)

Rice Fields surrounding Narita Onsen