Yuko Uno -- Sazae-san (サザエさん）

For me and a lot of other families in Japan....we all know that the weekend is just about over when we see the following:

Well, for me only, the 6 p.m. hour on Sundays is the big signal for me that we're heading out of the weekend and back into Blue Monday. On Fuji-TV, there is Chibi Maruko-chan（ちびまる子ちゃん）, the anime about the cheeky if basically good-hearted little girl living out in a small prefectural town, and then at 6:30, there is of course "Sazae-san", the long-running show about the eternally young woman and life with her family in a neighbourhood of Tokyo. If I were at home on Sundays, I would always be having dinner in front of the TV watching the two cartoons. It's almost a Japanese obligation.

"Sazae-san", created by Machiko Hasegawa（長谷川町子）in 1946 as a 4-frame newspaper comic strip, took its success to television for the first time in October 1969 (in fact, it was the 5th of October, meaning that the anime has just passed its 43rd birthday), and its famous Sunday opening theme has remained intact. One of the characteristics of the opening for the show is during the song, Sazae gets to visit a number of famous tourist sites throughout Japan.

The theme was written by Haruo Hayashi（林春生）and composed by Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）. Simply titled as " Sazae-san", the brass and strings just bring tons of nostalgia from those days....just like the anime has. Life in Sazae's world is always ideal with no problems that cannot be solved in less than 10 minutes....no matter how naughty her younger brother is. The vocalist has always been Yuko Uno（宇野ゆう子）, a chanson singer.

I guess whenever the ending theme for the show finished, it was time to wash the dishes and then get those lesson plans done....sigh. But during those 30 minutes of "Sazae-san", I got to see a slice-of-life Tokyo that probably never existed in real life but still brought a nice measure of domestic comfort.

Oops....did forget. Here's the full version of the theme: