Shonan Beach FMShonan Beach FM

There is a 1991 Japanese film, Hold Me as Many Times as the Waves, about students running a radio station along the Shonan coast, and Shonan Beach FM describes itself as that film made real. It went on air on 3 December 1993, the first community broadcaster in the Kanto region and the fourth in the whole country, with a transmitter putting out a quarter of a watt. Power reached twenty watts by 2000, and the company behind it is registered as Zushi-Hayama Community Broadcasting.

It was streaming over RealAudio by 1996, years before most stations anywhere, and has run around the clock online since 2004. Jazz is the house style, and its own concert series, SHONAN JAZZ BY THE SEA, has been staged at the Zushi marina since 2003. The rest of the schedule is local: news, a fishing programme, interviews with the region's mayors, an amateur radio club. It also brews its own beer.