Taiiku Okazaki

**Taiiku Okazaki** (岡崎体育), born **Akitoshi Oka** (岡亮聡), is a music artist involved in Bottleman. He is involved in the Japanese dub of Cap Revolution Bottleman DX.

## Biography

Taiiku performed the first opening theme, Readycap!. He also had voice acting roles in the season, cameos as a minor character modeled after himself, Tycoon Ochazaki, in Episode 18.

He was born in Nishinomiya, Hyoga Prefecture on July 03, 1989. Due to his family having moved to Uji, Kyoto when he was three years old, he spent most of his early life there. He later learned to play the piano and baseball when he was in elementary school. He also listened to different singers when he was a child, such as Eminem and Queen. He used to compose songs on the Nintendo DS game *Daigasso! Band Brothers!* to further is music skills.

He grew up in a single-parent household. Also, being an only child, his mother wanted him to get a solid job, and told him to give up if he couldn't debut in a major music milestone after four years. Therefore, since his indie days, Taiiku had always said, "I will debut in a major label by the summer of my 27th year," and in May 2016 (when he was 26), he achieved that goal.

He is a graduate of Doshisha University. He used to be a member of the band Aishinkakura Nuruhachi, until the band disbanded after one of the members emigrated to the USA. After he graduated from university, he had a part-time job at a supermarket while also having joined another band.

Taiiku began his independent music career after graduating university in 2012, which was when he began using the name "Taiiku Okazaki" as his stage moniker under SME Records. In 2016, he began expanding his career by singing for commercials and television programs, such as theme songs for *Pokémon: Sun & Moon*. By 2019, Taiiku has obtained more popularity than before as a musician and actor, for example being the Team Skull member Akitoshi/Okazaki in *Pokémon: Sun & Moon*, and holding a solo live concert on June 9, 2019 at the Super Saitama Arena.

## Trivia

* He chose his stage name "Taiiku Okazaki" because he likes the musician Takkyu Ishino from the band DENKI GROOVE.
* He took piano lessons in the first grade of elementary school, but was forced to quit after only three months because his piano teacher was concentrating on finding another full-time job.
* He grew up in an environment surrounded by music, as his mother was a music lover and Queen chaser, and he began listening to Queen and Deep Purple in the fifth grade.
* When he was a student at Kyoto Prefectural Nanyo High School, he joined the hard tennis club and made it to the top four in the Kyoto Prefectural Public High School Tournament in his second year. Around the same time, he purchased a Fender Japan 40,000 yen guitar by mail order, but failed to play it because he could not hold the guitar's valley chords.
* Okazaki positions his own musical style as "Basin Techno," and uses the English translation of "Basin Techno" on the hoodies he wears for his albums and live performances. It is named after the Kyoto Basin, Okazaki's birthplace. Okazaki says, "The music is closer to J-Pop and techno-pop, but the word 'techno' is cool, and I would be offended if I called it techno, so I named it 'Basin Techno' to muddy the waters. Even if it's the same song, I'll change it up a bit every time so that you can enjoy it no matter how many times you listen to it, that's the Basin Techno style. If you fail to do that, it is not Basin Techno. There is a mountain, a basin, and another mountain. If there is no change, it is just plain techno."
* After his major music debut, he lived at his parents' house in Uji City, Kyoto for a while, and used a study desk at his parents' house for songwriting and recording. He used to use his mother's used stockings for the windshield of his microphone to save money. In August 2019, he announced that he had moved out of his parents' house and started living alone in Tokyo.
* He thought about using the name "Taiiku Oka," but since it did not sound good, he assumed the stage name "Okazaki" of his mother, who was in the MC business, and changed his stage name to "Taiiku Okazaki".
	+ It should be noted that his mother took the stage name "Okazaki" because there were two people with the last name Oka.
		- Okazaki himself also once argued about his stage name being wrongly typed, in the magazine *anan*, that Okazaki is not a surname, and that the name "Okazakitaiiku" is a single word, so there is no need for a space between Okazaki and Taiiku.

## Links

### References

1. ↑ https://www.sonymusic.co.jp/artist/okazakitaiiku/profile/
2. ↑ https://taiiku-cawaii-japan.hatenablog.com/entry/2018/02/03/222315
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 https://natalie.mu/music/pp/okazakitaiiku
4. ↑ https://taiiku-cawaii-japan.hatenablog.com/entry/2014/10/15/041326M
5. ↑ https://ananweb.jp/news/256386/

### External Links

Official Site- https://okazakitaiiku.com/