Happy Anniversary, Kayo Kyoku Plus!

Well, yesterday on January 31st, my blog, Kayo Kyoku Plus, actually reached 1 year old! I had done a blog during the last several years of my time in Japan before and when I finally got back in December 2011, I decided to continue it since I liked writing.

However, there was also a part of me that thought about those CDs I lugged back from the Pacific to join the CDs and the several Japanese albums and dozens of cheap Canadian Tire cassette tapes of radio programs that had been left back here in Toronto, along with my early memories of kayo kyoku on the stereo. And I thought, like peanut butter and chocolate, I could put the two, kayo kyoku and blogging, together. I mean, I knew that there have been other people who have posted their own blogs about Japanese music up, but I also wanted to inject a little about my thoughts about the music and the circumstances in which I bought it...just because. At first, I'd wondered about doing a podcast about it but after reading a rather thick tome on podcasting, even my rather thick brain quickly got the message that playing music on a podcast was gonna get me into some trouble.

So, I went for the blog. And in retrospect, I think it was the better way. Part of my purpose was not just putting my stuff and commentary up there, but to see if there were anyone else who had an interest in some of the old Showa Era music. And even though I am grateful for the number of pageviews approaching 50,000 at the time of this writing (although I'm also aware that probably a certain fraction of them have been of one-second duration), I am especially thankful for those who have been taking the time and energy to comment on some of the songs.....people like bode1967 from South America, JTM from Hawaii, makotogawa from Croatia, The President from the UK, nikala from my hometown, and all of the others. The surprising thing is how wide-ranging the look-ins have been. There have been contacts from Algeria, Norway, Singapore, Russia and Pakistan. I look forward to their continued comments and also encourage others to comment, even if it's just for one song and one singer.

One of the bonuses of doing KK Plus has been the ability to learn more about the songs themselves....about the stories behind their productions, and who were responsible for them. A year after I started the blog, names like Yu Aku, Kyohei Tsutsumi and Takashi Matsumoto have become pretty household for me over the past year.

And another bonus has been some of the commenters giving their suggestions about songs they've enjoyed. Some of them were tunes I'd forgotten about, others I had never heard of. So, in the future, I will put up some additional stuff for Ryoko Shinohara and Ichiko Fujii. That was what I was hoping to get: a conversation going about this admittedly very niche topic for a blog.

Now, as for the future....I had thought naively in the start that I was gonna end up gasping and wheezing to the finish line of one year, bereft of any other songs I could put up. But as I got closer to the end of 2012, I realized that I was gonna be going beyond January 31 2013 by a fair margin. I'm still not sure whether I can actually make a 2nd anniversary doing the same thing I've been doing but for the meantime, thanks to the suggestions, books like "Japanese City Pop" and some dusting off of the cobwebs in my memory, I think I can still keep on chugging away for the next little while at least. I'm now thinking about going back to my old cassette tapes and hear anything I've missed.

Finally, I just wanted to thank The President for informing me about the presence of this rarity, "Love Trip" by Takako Mamiya. I made the investment and got the CD a few days ago. It's always satisfying when I can get something special like this. Someday, I'd like to get a disc of Makoto Matsushita's "First Light". One never knows what's possible.

Anyways, yoroshiku onegai shimasu.