As in past years, our marketing director, Gary Boss, traveled to Japan in August for Summer Sonic, a music festival held simultaneously in Tokyo and Osaka. In this first part of his recap, Gary introduces us to the scene in Tokyo leading up to the show. Well here I am again in the fast-paced, sweltering environment that is Tokyo in August.  I arrived surprisingly refreshed and ready to see what this wonderful country had in store for me. After a brief stay in Ochanomizu (near the Audio-Technica offices which are housed in a modern high-rise building designed to look like a giant speaker) I headed out with my Japanese hosts Ueno and Yoshi to look at some local electronics and music stores in Akihabara. It is interesting to see the proliferation of A-T headphones everywhere as almost all Japanese wear headphones and, as the market leader in Japan, many of those headphones are from A-T!We took a brief trip on a few trains and ended up at our final destination of Makuhari within the Chiba Prefecture. Our hotel this year, as in years past, is the Hotel Francs, which has wonderful hospitality and appears to be primarily a wedding hotel, but is overrun by all types of Japanese music lovers during Summer Sonic. Their standard uniform is a T-shirt proclaiming their allegiance to a specific band, cut off jean shorts, trendy running shoes like New Balance or Asics… oh, and a towel. Summer Sonic is music genre agnostic, this year featuring Ariana Grande, Marilyn Manson, The Chemical Brothers, Carly Rae Jepsen and the Japanese enigma band Babymetal, as well as about another 50 equally diverse bands. The crowd tends to be a mixture of punk, metal and J Pop fans in one happy, well behaved group. In fact, the more of these shows I come to, the more I realize that the typical Japanese music fan has a very deep understanding, love and musical knowledge of all popular music, regardless of genre. My first stop was to see my longtime friend and international relations rep for Creativeman Productions (the folks putting this show on) Rob Kelso. It’s funny, we have known each other for a long time and he’s a super swell guy; however I have never known him to ask for anything. So when he asked if I could bring him a new A-T baseball hat to replace the one I gave him eight years ago, I was happy to stow one in my luggage and bring it on over! He leaves items in Japan, including his hat and weber grills, to save time and shipping costs. His old hat had seen the ravages of eight years of intense heat and the pressure of having to deal with the constant trials and tribulations of dealing with artist management. Rob is an affable guy and indicated that the show was going off without a hitch up to this point. Heck my crew and I even had time to stop for a quick “sticker club” shot with Rob provided by Summer Sonic. Our Japanese friends felt a bit awkward as this is an activity usually reserved for Japanese girls. Well, sorry guys. Next stop, the Audio-Technica booth. One of the interesting things about Audio-Technica is that we make products that not only appeal to a small, specialized section of the public, like musicians and engineers, which is great at a festival like this with over 100 bands (that’s where I come in), but we also make a wide array of headphones that appeal to EVERYBODY! That’s where the booth comes in. The main focus this year was the ATH-M50x which was punctuated by a massive 10' tall replica of the headphones. Folks entered to win various A-T products and it proved to be a great success enjoyed by all. Be sure to check back soon for Part 2 of Gary’s Summer Sonic recap!