Looks like some of us have got holidays. We've got Thanksgiving here in Canada, America is celebrating Columbus Day while the Japanese have just gotten over Sports Day. It's ironic that in Japan on that particular day, it's all about the folks getting out there to enjoy some exercise through local sports activities while here in the Great White North, we're settling down to overeat.
Today's first song is by someone that I only discovered on YouTube recently by the name of Nana Kondo（近藤名奈）. Hailing from Aichi Prefecture, she made her debut in 1993 as a singer who was seen as the second coming of Mariko Nagai（永井真理子）due to her tomboyish looks and a similarly crisp and clear voice. She even started out at Fun House, the same production company that had also enlisted Nagai.
"Toi Omoi" (Distant Memories) is a track from her 3rd album in 1994, "Saiko no Egao wo Hanataba ni Shite"（最高の笑顔を花束にして...Make the Happiest Face Into a Bouquet）, and it's true that she does sound somewhat like Nagai but with a mellower element in her sound as if a part of singer Yurie Kokubu（国分友里恵）in the 1990s had been injected into her. The ballad created by Chisa Tanabe and Nobuhiko Kashihara（田辺智沙・樫原伸彦）has that fresh and inspiring quality with which Kondo's soaring vocals match quite well.
Kondo remained a singer during the 90s, releasing 13 singles and 5 albums. From 2000, she became a vocal trainer.
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