I love writing stories of serendipity, so it surprised me that I hadn’t shared this one with you yet.

Earlier this year I was very focused on writing an (still) upcoming book on tenkara. I established a ritual; every morning I’d wake up, make myself some coffee, and for the first couple of hours in the day I’d turn off my email and internet, and focus on writing. I found that I loved the peace and quiet of early morning, but I felt that I couldn’t fully wake up on the merits of coffee alone, so I started turning on the music. Since I do not have an extensive music library, I turned to the internet radio service Pandora.

One day in the middle of writing, a song caught my attention. It was an instrumental song, and it also had a very distinct feel to it. It was relatively fast, played mostly on a cello, it had a folksy/bluegrassy feel to it, but for some reason I thought I could hear Japanese influence within the song. I stopped writing and went to see what song it was. It was called ” Fishin’ “!!! And, the artist had a Japanese name, Takénobu. Wow! 

Ignoring my rule of not turning the internet on in the morning I went to the web to research who was this Takenobu? And why was he playing a song called Fishin’? And, what relation would he have to Japan? This is his website.

I immediately pulled up my email account and wrote him an email. I told him, “So, what are the odds, here I’m typing an essay about Japanese fly-fishing (tenkara), with music playing on my Pandora radio, and your song “Fishin’ ” comes up! Well, I thought I’d send you a quick email, too much of a sign to ignore…”

I have since fallen in love with his music. It is tenkara music: “music from heaven”.

Nick Takénobu Ogawa has released 4 albums, each one as good as the other. Each one is definitely Takénobu style but they are not formulaic, they are authentic. Besides the song Fishin’, I have also become a big fan of the song “Limbo” in the Exposition album, which will have to become the soundtrack of a future Tenkara USA video.  And, he’s been very kind by allowing me to use his song Deeper Than the Vine, another favorite of mine, in the video below. His albums may be found for sale here.

You may also listen to the songs in their entirety on his site. But, if you are looking for some fantastic music for fly-tying, for driving to your favorite fishing spot, and for the drive back home, do yourself a favor and buy all 4 of his albums and put them on your player. They are inexpensive, will go great with tenkara, and will give you hours of joy.