One of the joys of traveling the lesser known regions of Japan, is exploring the local cuisine and night life. In well-known touristy places, there are many guide books to make choices of where to go easier. Also there is a much higher chance that any place you enter is used to foreigners.

So walking around for the first time in one of the smaller outlying cities, trying to decide what place to go in, represents a bit more of a challenge.

For me it is the sounds emanating from the establishment that are the deciding factor in whether to take the plunge or not. There are two layers of sound to analyze, what you hear with the door shut, and what leaks out when the door is open when people enter and exit. Particularly when exploring alone, I take my time in picking what place to enter first. So I am like an airplane pilot circling the airport waiting for the right winds to commit to touching down. Each time I pass a place I get a little more data, firm up my overall plan for the evening, and muster up the courage to decide on my first stop. More often than not, that is an 'izakaya' – a casual food and drink shop.

These are by far the easiest to get that essential aural information from, because the doors tend to be very porous, so the sound of the customers flows easily out into the street. Hearing one old man who sounds like he 's preaching to the clientele is a deal breaker. A group of people boisterously conversing with a sense of camaraderie is a definite OK to enter sign.

Then once you start to open the door there is the ubiquitous greeting, "irrashamase!" ("welcome!") I am not a fan of an over the top greeting that sounds like they are rooting for their favorite sports team, but I welcome all greetings without judgement. It is what happens right after the greeting that decides whether I will abort the landing or not. It is rare, but occasionally you can be made to feel very unwelcome instantly, buy a silent stare. But if the sound you hear is, "how many in your party?" or "please enter and take a seat", your first stop of the evening has been decided.

In Tokyo, I'm am disappointed when there is a TV on the wall and and everyone seems to be more interested in it than the person sitting next to them or their food. But the more rural you get, the more places feel like an extension of someone's living room. And as more customers are regulars, I imagine they might get sick of each other at some point and having the diversion of the TV lessens social friction. Having a TV on can be a good icebreaker for you the intruder. You can comment on the show they're watching to see if they're interested in being social.

Sometimes I can't decide on a place to eat immediately upon setting out on the search. In those cases I seek out a 'standing bar’, usually a small establishment where everyone stands at a counter drinking and snacking on simple bar food. These places usually don't even have doors, just curtains that delineate their space from the street. So it's easy to get a read just by standing outside for a short bit of time. I also found that these tend to be the most friendly, making information gathering about the environs is easy. A few of what have become my favorite restaurants in some cities, I've learned from people standing next to me in this kind of place.

Every year I make a pilgrimage to Kanazawa City on the Japan Sea to eat kanburi, winter yellowtail. Last year I arrived at my go to place only to find I had booked the wrong day. So I stopped in at my regular standing bar, a converted Baskin & Robbins, called Choikichi, ‘a pinch of luck’, and asked the locals what I should do. They told me about a place, but I couldn't believe it actually existed. A music bar that serves the highest level of winter yellowtail. It can because the owner had spent ten years working in a classy fish restaurant. Standing outside the door I could hear they were playing a Phil Collins song. That should've been a dealbreaker, but I really wanted to get my yearly winter yellowtail. So opening the door, it was just us I imagined. Dark, grungy, progressive rock CDs piled up irregularly against the walls. Not at all the kind of atmosphere in which you want to eat raw fish. But I had gone that far, and wasn't about to give up, so I ordered it. It was mind bogglingly good. As good as any fish specialty shop. I even got them to change to spinning King Crimson instead of Phil Collins.

There are many ways you could categorize establishments in Japan that are related to jazz.

For me the easiest, broad stroke segmentation is, what is considered classic jazz and what isn’t to the proprietors. If you hear Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, John Coltrane with Johnny Hartman or anything by Bill Evans before you enter, don’t expect to see Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman or Albert Ayler albums in the record racks. Their cutoff point for classic jazz is usually 1964, when John Coltrane’s classic quartet ended.

One of my most profound experiences as a jazz fan seeking out new experiences in Japan, was in Niigata City. I had the name of a place and a map that turned out to be less than accurate. Walking past the front of a shop that looked closed, I heard what sounded like someone playing the bass clarinet way in the distance. I entered the alley on the side of the building and there was the sign for the place I was looking for. I immediately entered and was greeted with what sounded like somebody playing solo bass clarinet. I sat down in the middle of this empty jazz bar looking for the person playing, as it suddenly sinks in that I'm listening to Eric Dolphy playing God Bless the Child, a song I know well and love. I looked to the front of the shop and saw two massive wooden speakers with giant horns on top of them, and realized I was just listening to a record. They were theater speakers from the 1930’s imported from America. The sound was extremely three-dimensional and life-like. It hit me so deeply that I was reduced to tears.

A night out doesn’t really seem finished without a third stop. I have not and will never sing karaoke. But I have had some fun times in karaoke bars. I pick places where when I stand in front of the door, I hear someone absolutely smashed singing totally out of tune. Going to such a place seems to be a recipe for a good time. If you have a local who thinks he is the town's Pavarotti, the atmosphere can be oppressive, because they can consider it rude if you don't sit quietly and listen. Talentless drunks on the other hand, don't care if you talk, drink and carry-on while they are crooning. When pressed to sing, I just tell them I am a good listener, not singer. Along with buying a lot of drinks, that seems to pacify them. The composer John Zorn has said that when he is writing music he needs to have some sound in the background. This may seem counterintuitive, but it totally clicked with me when I heard him say it. Zorn plays the soundtrack to Ben Hur over and over while working. I carry a notepad everywhere I go to sketch out ideas that might pop into my head. In reviewing my notepads, it's clear sitting in a raucous karaoke bar is one of the best environments to stimulate my creativity.

Three stops is usually enough, but here is a danger zone you must transverse on the way back to your hotel. It's passing in front of those tall , skinny buildings, ten stories tall with ten bars per floor. All it takes is for one of those doors to swing open, and the sounds of Otis Rush, or the Talking Heads, or Glen Gould to be the candle to your moth, sucking you in with little chance of escape. Such is the sonority of a night on the town in Japan.

– Bob Sliwa