Shabondama Holiday（シャボン玉ホリデー）

Folks of a certain age (for example, ME) might go back to their childhood television history and remember a musical-variety show featuring an amiable conductor-host, champagne music and lots of bubbles (along with Geritol as the main sponsor) to start each episode. Well, that was "The Lawrence Welk Show", and yup, I remember Lawrence and his band along with young and smiley dancers Bobby & Cissy, Norma Zimmer, clarinetist extraordinaire Henry Cuesta and Myron Floren the accordionist.

Now, the above footage is from 1960 (the show had already been on for nearly a decade), a few years before my birth. My memories of "The Lawrence Welk Show" have all been in colour, but it was a regular part of our viewing lineup along with all of those farm-based shows on CBS, and "Mr. Dressup" on CBC.

Scoot ahead a few decades when I was teaching in Japan. I was teaching my weekly English circle with my gang of middle-aged and senior citizen mothers, when one of my students revealed that she used to be a dancer on a NTV variety series back in the 1960s called "Shabondama Holiday" (Bubble Holiday). I'd already known that my student was a ballet teacher and she certainly looked very graceful and lithe, so it was no surprise when I heard that she'd had her time on telly as a young dancer.

Premiering in 1961 and having a long 11-year run, with that title and the nature of the product, I figure that it must have gotten some sort of impetus from "The Lawrence Welk Show". I couldn't confirm it for sure, but looking at the old footage on YouTube, the half-hour show on Sundays certainly had the look and feel of a launch pad for those classic standards, and it always starred famed duo The Peanuts（ザ・ピーナッツ）and comic band Hajime Hana & The Crazy Cats（ハナ肇とクレージーキャッツ）which accounted for the higher comedy ratio than in "The Lawrence Welk Show".

According to the J-Wiki account, there is a long list of celebrities who made their appearance on the show including Kyu Sakamoto（坂本九）, Kiyoko Suizenji（水前寺清子）, The Drifters（ザ・ドリフターズ）and Rumiko Koyanagi（小柳ルミ子）.

All of the goofy cornball comedy aside, though, when The Crazy Cats get into one of their many music session, they can cook, and the first part above with The Peanuts getting into the rhythm is pretty cool. Still, The Cats can't resist pulling on their comic side.

What I hadn't known before I started thinking about doing this article was that even after "Shabondama Holiday" had finished its original run in 1972, there was a second run of sorts which lasted for a far shorter 6 months between 1976 and 1977 on late-night Saturdays. And this time, The Peanuts were replaced by Pink Lady（ピンク・レディー）. Sorry that I haven't been able to find any footage for that short season.

However, I did find footage of one special episode of the series which was televised in 1989.