Kobukuro -- Kono Hoshi no Tsuzuki wo（この地球の続きを）

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Having regular access to Japanese television via Jme and before that, TV Japan, I've been able to keep tabs on the Osaka Expo this year which opened to the general public a couple of days ago. Other than that, I haven't heard a single thing on the event anywhere else including Canada and America. Up to this point, the advance ticket sales hadn't been great although the opening Sunday had a lot of issues with long lineups and smartphone hang-ups regarding maps and registration. Will it be a success? We'll just have to see.

I figured that there just had to be an official theme song for the event but I didn't actually hear it until today's "Uta Con"（うたコン）broadcast. I didn't even know that it was the pop duo Kobukuro（コブクロ） who had been behind it until they showed up on the program. And it was all the way back in February 2022 when Shunsuke Kuroda (黒田俊介) and Kentarō Kobuchi (小渕健太郎) were given the assignment to come up with that official theme.

Later that year in July, Kobukuro presented their theme song at the "1000 Days to Go!" Expo-related event at Universal Studios Japan with the digital single coming out the following day. "Kono Hoshi no Tsuzuki wo" (The Continuation of This World) takes listeners on a magic carpet ride with the help of a children's chorus, some pounding piano and of course the soulful voices of Kuroda and Kobuchi. With the underlying intoning of "Let's go and see the future!", it fits as the campaign song for all of those goodies within the various pavilions on display. So, "Kono Hoshi no Tsuzuki wo" was in existence long before the Expo's full bloom in the past few days but then again so was "Sekai no Kuni Kara Konnichiwa" (世界の国からこんにちは）, the theme song for Expo 1970 in Osaka which had been created back in 1967.