I Just Found My First Walkman, from the 90s, Made by Akaiwa Sound and It Brought into My Life a Lot of Good Memories since I Was a Child.
My Akaiwa Sound Walkman from 90s – Picture taken with Xiaomi 11T Pro
If in another article I wrote to you about my first computer from the early 90s, now I want to tell you that I found my first Walkman in the storage room, from the 90s, of Japanese origin, which looks brand new because I didn’t use it much back then.
The 90s were unique, and I remember them with great pleasure: from game cartridges of the Nintendo Famicom console, which in Europe was a copy and was sold under the name “Terminator 2” to games like Super Mario, Prince of Persia, Aladdin, and even Coca-Cola pagers that you could win in the company’s contests. If you wanted to send a message on them, you had to buy a card, scratch it off, and then call using a landline where you would transmit the message to an operator who would send it to the pager.
The signal wasn’t very good, so sometimes the message would arrive, and other times it wouldn’t. If you didn’t receive the message the first time, it wouldn’t be retransmitted, and you had to use a new card to send a new message.
I miss the Prince of Persia game from those times, which was available both on the Nintendo Famicom and later on Pentium 236, 386, 486 etc. Also during that time, I had a Walkman of Japanese origin, manufactured by Akaiwa Sound, which I found it again stored in the storage room of my apartment. I hadn’t seen or used it since the 90s, and it still looks pretty good because I didn’t use it for a long period of time back then.
My Akaiwa Sound Walkman from 90s – Picture taken with Black Shark 4
So, I decided to give it a little test and used some rechargeable batteries, also Japanese, Eneloop… which I use with my semi-professional Nikon camera. The Walkman can also be used with a 3V DC power adapter, but I don’t have one. I also searched for an old cassette from that time, with a band that I really like. I used some headphones as well, made guess by whom: exactly, also Japanese (Audio-Technica), which you can see in the pictures.
Unfortunately, it seems that my childhood Walkman has some problems because the sound on the headphones is like a deep voice, as if you were playing a tape at slow speed. I can’t tell if it’s because of the cassette, since it hasn’t been used in a long time, or if it’s the Walkman’s motor, or perhaps the batteries are to blame. I’m not sure: maybe the playback head needs cleaning or there’s some other issue with it.
Either way, I can say that I was happy to see it again because it’s part of my childhood and it brings back many nostalgic memories from the 90s.
My Akaiwa Sound Japanese Walkman from 90s – Picture taken with Xiaomi 11T Pro
My vintage Akaiwa Sound Walkman from Japan – Picture taken with Xiaomi 11T Pro
My Akaiwa Sound first Walkman from 90s – Picture taken with Black Shark 4
What technological “toys” from the past do you have that, even if you don’t use them anymore, you remember them with great joy and they bring a smile to your face just thinking about them?