# My first Sony Walkman

- Author: Joichi Ito
- Date: 2004-11-20T08:52:43Z


Boris blogs about his first Sony Walkman.

I remember my first Walkman. It was the Sony TPS-L2 (thanks to the Vintage Walkman Museum). I was in 9th grade. I remember my favorite song was "Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen. I was living in Tokyo and just started going to discos and nightclubs. I had just moved to Tokyo. The Walkman was part of the "coming of age", becoming independent, asking a girl out for the first time and becoming Japanese part of my life.

I remember the feeling of having music thundering in my head as I walked to school. It made me feel all subversive inside. I also remember the little orange button that turned on a microphone so you could hear what people were saying. These days, we just pull off our headphones. Now with my in-ear earphones, I wish my iPod has a button to turn on a microphone so I don't have to extract the earphones just to listen to someone trying to say something to me.

The Walkman also represented a period in gadget history where companies like Sony could create cool new gadgets based on some great idea by the founder. It seems like Apple is the only company that can really pull that off these days and even then, it's really a redesign of a good idea, not a brand new idea. I miss the feeling that I had when I got my first Walkman.

I think this "meme" started with Nika





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