The one thing that I had always wanted to know about the Japanese consumer goods bargain emporium Don Quixote (since 1980) was how the place got its name. Well, the founder, Takao Yasuda（安田隆夫）, had wanted a name to reflect the drive to take on new challenges and that was summed up in the famous novel "Don Quixote" by Miguel de Cervantes with the main character more than willing to tilt at windmills.
I have visited the odd Don Quixote during my years in the Kanto area including the above Hollywood-looking Asakusa branch. They sell anything and everything although I have to admit that I was rather stunned that the Kit Kat chocolate section was only a tight corridor away from some rotating sexual devices. That's a real twist!
Ahem...anyways, what I hadn't known was that Don Quixote had its own theme. Well, I should have known. Other major stores have come up with their own tunes including Yodobashi Camera（ヨドバシカメラ）so why not the Don as well?
Mind you, "MIRACLE SHOPPING ~ Don Quixote no Tehma" (The Don Quixote Theme Song) didn't come about until some two decades after its founding. Its arrival in 1999 or 2000 was due to Maimi Tanaka（田中マイミ）, who had been a singer-songwriter since at least the early 1980s, but actually entered Don Quixote as a new part-time employee in 1994. Gaining responsibilities and success in sales and the famous jungle-like design of the store interiors, Tanaka became a full employee and then a department chief. Founder Yasuda then asked her to draw on her old songwriting abilities to come up with a jingle song for the store. It had to be catchy enough to get the shoppers inside to bounce about and purchase stuff. Well, that she has done thanks to the synthpop arrangement along boogie jazz lines.
In her early years, Tanaka had provided songs for other artists such as Junichi Inagaki（稲垣潤一）, Beat Takeshi（ビートたけし）and Hitomi Ishikawa（石川ひとみ）. Before "MIRACLE SHOPPING", she has also put out her own single back in 1980 and an album the following year.
About a year ago a Don Quixote opened up here in blue forest city in blue forest prefecture. I haven't been in it yet, but I have heard the famous theme song more than few times! It is catchy and it sticks with you. I first heard this shortly after I moved to Kawasaki city in 2002 since Don Quixote was the closest shopping to my apartment. I had not know that the theme song was only two years old at the time!
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