Yutaro Miura -- Hoshikuzu no Merry-Go-Round （星屑メリーゴーランド）

Over the last several years, the inevitable signs of my aging have come to the fore: graying hair, joints that snap, crackle and pop even more than my morning cereal, and the fact that I can barely last one visit to the buffet table (that last one especially hurts). Another sign is hearing and seeing the children of some of my favourite singers from Japan firmly in control of their careers in the geinokai.

Seiko Matsuda's（松田聖子）daughter, Sayaka Kanda（神田沙也加）, has been entertaining for the past several years, folk singer Ryoko Moriyama's（森山良子）son, singer-songwriter Naotaro Moriyama（森山直太朗）, is a fairly common presence on the telly, and from the pages of this blog, I read that former aidoru Naoko Kawai's（河合奈保子）daughter, kaho, has started her own singing career.

And just within the last few days, I found out that one of Japanese entertainment's longest-lasting couples, actor Tomokazu Miura（三浦友和）and 1970s aidoru Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）, have two sons continuing on the family business as it were.

I saw one of their sons, Yutaro Miura（三浦祐太朗）, on some NHK music variety show a few nights ago and although I didn't hear him sing there, I could see some of Tomokazu and some of Momoe depending on which way the singer-songwriter-actor turned his face.

Between 2002 and 2010, Miura was part of a rock band by the name of Peaky SALT whose activities came to a halt when the members had differing views on the future direction of their group. So, Miura went solo with his debut single coming out in 2012. His third single, "Hoshikuzu Merry-Go-Round" (Stardust Merry-Go-Round) came out in January 2015.

The title just seems like a match-up of two words that have been used over and over again for kayo titles but the ballad itself doesn't sound too bad at all. Considering the music video, it almost has a Xmas-y vibe to it and Miura has a decent if not outstanding voice (it doesn't quite stand out from some of his contemporaries). "Hoshikuzu Merry-Go-Round" managed to get as high as No. 46 on Oricon.

I was able to find this video of Miura singing his mother's eternal classic "Ii Hi Tabidachi"（いい日旅立ち）with the man who created it, Shinji Tanimura（谷村新司）, and with Ryudo Uzaki（宇崎竜童）, who also helped come up with a lot of Yamaguchi's later hits, on guitar (Sorry but that video has been taken down, but the above still has Miura performing the song).

At this point, I think this isn't even to the level of wishful thinking anymore but more of wistful fantasy, but there's still some part of me who would love to see Yamaguchi do a surprise appearance anywhere to sing a song.