Yuki Nakayamate -- Telephone Box（テレフォン・ボックス）

 

Maybe the only thing rarer than a winter coat out in Tokyo today is the old-fashioned telephone booth. By the time I got to Japan to work starting from the late 1980s, seeing those oddly-shaped phones with different colours in various establishments was becoming somewhat scarce but at least, the booths still existed everywhere taking their coins and then later those NTT or KDD telephone cards. But now, it's like searching for the hardest object in a city-wide scavenger hunt.

Interestingly enough, my impression is that the telephone booth was a popular setting within a Japanese pop tune because one-half of a dramatic conversation, often involving love, took place inside those glass or plastic walls. Perhaps that is also the case with Yuki Nakayamate's（なかやまて由希）"Telephone Box", a track on her first album from 1981 "Hold Me Tender". The album also includes another song that I've covered, "Ijiwaru Shiokaze"（いぢわる潮風）

Perhaps the entire album runs the gamut between the genres of AOR and City Pop but when comparing the two tracks, whereas "Ijiwaru Shiokaze" has that Steely Dan and Yumi Arai（荒井由実）mixture, "Telephone Box", written and composed by the singer, seems to be a nostalgic throwback to some of that West Coast soft rock of the 1970s. Couldn't find the lyrics online for this particular song but the somewhat sunnier nature of the melody might mean something more optimistic within the conversation taking place inside that booth.