Shoko Sawada -- Ochiba no Heya （落葉の部屋）

(cover version....a great one!)

Another treasure dug up from the tapes of "Sounds of Japan", Shoko Sawada's（沢田聖子） "Ochiba no Heya" (Room of Fallen Leaves) fits the season although the leaves are pretty much down and decomposing into the ground now in Toronto. Written and composed by Sawada as the B-side to her March 1981 5th single, "Haru"（春...Spring）, the then-19-year-old sings "Ochiba no Heya" just as if she were indeed that college student walking along that path in Musashino, Tokyo through the rustling autumn leaves, thinking of meeting that special someone. I can say that it's one of the prettiest songs I have ever heard, and can imagine Sawada in her room overlooking the forest and doing "He loves me, he loves me not" with the petals of a flower.

The Tokyo native debuted as a singer in May 1979 with "Campus Sketch", although her life in entertainment had started over a decade previously when she started as a child actor. She even filmed a TV ad in 1968 for a pharmaceutical company alongside Kiyoshi Atsumi（渥美清）, otherwise known as the famed character of Tora-san.

According to both J-Wiki and Wikipedia, perhaps because of her aidoru good looks and the same kanji (albeit with different pronunciation) in her first name, Sawada had been compared to Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子） despite the facts that the latter singer's name was a stage name and that Sawada, who had debuted the year before Seiko-chan, belonged to a different genre altogether.