Junko Yagami -- Ame no Kyuujitsu（雨の休日）

 

Now that we're into March here, there's still a lot of snow on the ground after that major storm a couple of weeks ago but perhaps a lot of it may be disappearing in the next 24 to 48 hours with the forecast of some major rain tomorrow. We'll be a little closer to spring with the rising temperatures but we may have to go through some flooding.

One of the first Junko Yagami（八神純子）songs that I ever heard was her "Omoide no Screen" (思い出のスクリーン）from February 1979, and among other Yagami tunes that I heard back in those blossoming days of my love for Japanese pop music, it set the template for my initial impression of the Nagoya-born singer-songwriter. Back then, it was about the boogie-down downtown disco and Latin; I had yet to hear her very early works as a teenager in the early to mid 1970s.

Well, I got to get acquainted with the B-side of that 6th single recently. "Ame no Kyuujitsu" (Rainy Day Off) is very much a different animal. Written/composed by Yagami with arrangement by Masaaki Omura（大村雅朗）, it's a very somber ballad about a woman on a rainy day seeing a café or a restaurant that used to be frequented by her and a no-longer-present beau, and the reminiscings begin and perhaps some of her own water works. There is that dreamy feeling to the song as if the lady were seeing memories through rose-coloured glasses and a gauzy filter.