Megumi Mori -- Tokio Town （東京街）

Just to inform you, since there are two Megumi Moris in the Japanese music industry: one born in 1969, the other born in 1985, I'm talking about the former. This Megumi Mori （森恵）was an actress/singer/tarento during the 80s and early 90s and currently a lyricist.

I was scrounging around my dusty cabinet and came across an old compilation tape that I'd bought in Chinatown back in my U of T years. The first track on it was Mori's 3rd single, "Tokio Town", a cover of "Tokyo Town" by a singer named Sarah, released in 1986. I'm only guessing at when the Mori cover came out since information on dates is very sparse on the Net; since her singing career started in 1986 with "Yume Miru Dance Away"（夢見るダンス・アウェイ...Dancing Away While Looking at a Dream）, I'm just extrapolating that "Tokio Town" came out very late in 1986 or in 1987.

Originally composed by someone named B. Wilson and with Japanese lyrics by Hitoshi Shinohara（篠原仁志）, "Tokio Town", and the tape itself, got quite a lot of heavy play during those all-nighters in my room, and especially on one road trip to Chudleigh's Apple Farm, about an hour's drive away from Toronto, when I decided to bring in some musical entertainment to my friend's car (all of my buddies were Japanese). Refreshing my memory by listening to the YouTube video, I kinda wonder if this was the first Japanese Eurobeat song I had come across or whether Akemi Ishii's（石井明美） "Cha-Cha-Cha" beat it to the punch. In any case, it had quite the dynamic touch...a nice way to start the tape.

Mori's single went no higher than 36th place on Oricon, so it wasn't a huge hit by any means. But I'm sure there are probably a number of high school and university students in Japan from the 80s who would go "Natsukashii na...." on hearing it. I came across an extended remix of the song above.

And last but not least, here is the original by Sarah.

The 80s compilation tape

The lyrics for the song can be found at kget.jp.