Oh, the irony...it was just eight days ago that I wrote up about Hiromi Go's（郷ひろみ）"Hachi-gatsu no Etranger"（八月のエトランゼ...August Stranger）, and then I realized to my amazement that I had "Hachi-gatsu no Etranger" all along...for close to 35 years! It was just that it wasn't Go's "Hachi-gatsu no Etranger".
Actually, it is Junko Yagami's（八神純子）"Hachi-gatsu no Etranger", a track on her May 1990 13th studio album, "My Invitation". Yup, as I mentioned in that article, I'd bought the album in Kobe just a month after its release. By this point, Yagami had long gone past her City Pop stage, went through American R&B, and landed here in a mixture of R&B and World Music.
"Hachi-gatsu no Etranger" was written and composed by Yagami and her husband John J. Stanley, and it can be compared with Go's namesake song in that there are some danceable elements on the Lido Deck with both. However, unlike the disco City Pop of the earlier "Hachi-gatsu no Etranger", Yagami's version has incorporated some African and tropical island dance club rhythms and funk into this melodic sangria. Of course, another difference is that whereas the Go song has the kanji for August in the title, Yagami's song uses the number 8.
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