Toshinobu Kubota -- Yume with You （夢 with You）

Happy Valentine's Day! Did you get those flowers? Did you take your significant other to that swanky French restaurant? Did you snuggle up? Did you even remember Valentine's Day?

Well, just by happenstance, I was reading Marcos V's article on Hikaru Nishida's（西田ひかる） "Namida no Pearl Moon"（涙のPearl Moon）last night when I remembered one of her comedy-dramas from the early 90s. It was called "Chance!" from 1993, and it was part of the lineup that we had within our Japanese club's JTV series of showing trendy serial dramas on Wednesday nights at University of Toronto. Hikaru-chan was playing a fledgling talent manager who had to wrangle a difficult and embittered entertainer played by Hiroshi Mikami（三上博史）. The show also starred Shoko Aida（相田翔子）from Wink and had cameos by all sorts of stars such as Kyoko Koizumi（小泉今日子）, Akina Nakamori （中森明菜）and Toshinobu Kubota（久保田利伸）in what was a comic look at the TV industry and how especially flighty and fleeting fame can be there. I always thought that Mikami had looks which mixed in Hiroyuki Sanada and Takuya Kimura (especially the latter's snarly demeanor), and wondered whether there was a slight biographical angle with Kubota since Mikami was playing a hip singer who decided to ply his luck in the States for a couple of years and then return, only to be completely forgotten (not to intimate that Kubota suffered the same fate).

Speaking of Kubota, he provided the theme song for "Chance!", a real smoovy Valentine-friendly ballad "Yume with You" (Dream with You) that I hadn't heard in years. And once I did, I rather smacked myself for not being more faithful to this song. Kubota created a really nice and soulful piece that had me thinking about some of the fine American R&B love songs from the 80s. It just seemed a bit strange to have this ending a fairly goofball comedy each week.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xh2k5s_%E6%9C%AD%E5%B9%8C%E9%9B%AA%E7%A5%AD%E3%82%8A2011%E5%B9%B4-%E5%A4%A2withyou-%E4%B9%85%E4%BF%9D%E7%94%B0%E5%88%A9%E4%BC%B8_music

I'm not sure how "Yume with You" did on the Oricon weeklies but after its release in May 1993 as his 11th single, it ended the year as the 84th-ranked song selling about 370,000 copies. I'm fairly sure it did break the Top 10, though. There is an acapella version that was included on one of his BEST albums, "The Baddest II" from September in the same year.