The Pen Friend Club -- Doyoubi no Koibito （土曜日の恋人）

It was back during my JET days that I discovered the term pen friend which was the Japanese term for pen pal. Seems rather quaint now for such an expression to exist considering that we are now in the world of e-mail and texting. And even back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I only communicated with my old friends back in Toronto by snail mail so my round-trip correspondence would usually take two weeks! Yes, I'm sure some of you young'uns reading this article are envisioning words such as prehistoric and Cretaceous.

But hey, this is the place for some of the old stuff, the old kayo, to come through. To emphasize my point that the Japanese of today still love their standards of yesteryear, I introduce the band The Pen Friend Club（ザ・ペンフレンドクラブ）. According to their J-Wiki entry, this is a rock band that started up in 2012 focusing on 1960s music, specifically covering the material of The Beach Boys, Phil Spector and other artists who were into West Coast Rock. And on the Japan side of things, the band is also a big fan of Eiichi Ohtaki（大滝詠一）and Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）.

Ol' Tats still gets a lot of love from the fellows around him. Perhaps a number of anison fans may have discovered the wonders of Mr. Yamashita via Junk Fujiyama's（ジャンクフジヤマ）"Hoshikuzu no Pipeline"（星屑のパイプライン）. Well, The Pen Friend Club, which has had a lot of members pass through its doors, has also given its tribute to the legendary singer-songwriter with its cover of "Doyoubi no Koibito" (Saturday is for Lovers), one of the finest and sunniest numbers that he has created.

I don't know which of the female members is providing the vocals for "Doyoubi no Koibito", but she does give it a lot of justice. Sweet and light...just the type of tone for a summer song.

The Pen Friend Club has released 4 albums since its debut and its cover of "Doyoubi no Koibito" was placed onto its third album "Season of the Pen Friend Club" in 2016. I also noticed that although it's said that they focus on the 1960s, the band has also covered songs by Elton John and The Captain and Tennille.