Minori Suzuki -- FEELING AROUND

It's a cold and damp Monday here in Toronto although a lot of the snow has gone and the absolute zero-type of temperatures are not with us for now. Watching NHK's "News at Nine" this morning, Tokyo underwent its first horrifying snowstorm in about 4 years...something that we go through here perhaps around 4 times a year. In either Toronto or Tokyo, perhaps a good chunk of the population wouldn't mind having a steaming bowl of ramen in a warm restaurant. Incidentally, the ramen above is the Tonkotsu Black at the branch of Sansotei up in the northeast suburbs. My favourite soup when it comes to ramen is indeed the pork bone variety. Mind you, though, my heart and circulatory system may get their revenge on me someday if I went for the stuff weekly but once in a while is always welcome.

Now the reason that I'm enticing you with ramen today is because yesterday was the first anime-and-food session of the New Year that is 2018. To let you in on an opinion, I wasn't all that happy with the Fall 2017 season of anime aside from the reboot of "Mahoujin Guru Guru"（魔法陣グルグル）and the gradually heartwarming "Konohana Kitan"（このはな綺譚）. "Two-Car"...? Aaugh. However, it seems like the Winter 2018 season is pretty hopeful; in fact my anime buddy mentioned that for the first time in a long while, we may have to look through about 20 prospective shows since he posits that they all look rather interesting.

One of those shows that my friend showcased yesterday was "Ramen Daisuki Koizumi-san"（ラーメン大好き小泉さん）which, as you can guess, is about somebody with the name of Koizumi who greatly loves ramen. She pretty much breathes it, actually. It's almost cruel for us ramen lovers as to how lovingly the animators have shown Koizumi's ardor for her dish of choice and of course the different kinds of ramen.

It was about a year ago that the first 2017-based article for "Kayo Kyoku Plus" dealt with the catchy anison theme for a show titled around another Ms. K. Well, I'm doing the same here with "Koizumi-san" although Minori Suzuki's（鈴木みのり）"FEELING AROUND" isn't quite the classic earworm that fhana's "Aozora no Rhapsody"（青空のラプソディ）has been. I would put that song as my favourite anime theme for 2017, by the way.

Still "FEELING AROUND" has got a nice bounce to it with a bit of an Asian beat as the opening credits provide everything and everyone we need to know about the premise for "Koizumi-san". Suzuki, who was known up to now as a budding seiyuu, has made her debut as a solo singer with this one and it's due to be released in a couple of days. The song was written and composed by Koji Mihara（三原康司）, the bassist for the band Frederic（フレデリック）who came up with the catchy "oddloop" a few years back. (By the way, here is the article on the ending theme)

To be honest, considering the theme of the show, I was wondering whether Akiko Yano's（矢野顕子）ode to plain simple ramen would have been used.

Finally, to completely torture you into racing to the nearest noodle shop or, at least, the nearest supermarket which sells Sapporo Ichiban, you can take a look at this video for the Yokohama Ramen Museum.