Mr. Children -- Sanbyaku-rokujuu-go-nichi（365日）

I actually thought that Mr. Children's "Sanbyaku-rokujuu-go-nichi" (365 Days) was one of the band's singles, so I tried to search through their long list on J-Wiki but only came up with bupkiss. I mean, Kazutoshi Sakurai's（桜井和寿）inspirational love ballad is so uplifting and romantic that I assumed that the studio had been chomping at the bit to release it as such.

However, the fact is that it was "merely" a track on Mr. Children's 16th hit album "SENSE" from December 1st 2010 although it was used as an NTT campaign song. I encountered this song by accident last night on YouTube. As I said in my very first Mr. Children article back in 2013, I never became a huge MisChiru fan even though I do like the songs by the band that I've written about, and so I didn't keep too much focus on Sakurai and company throughout the years, especially once we all entered the new century. I've basically seen them as one of the quintessential 90s bands.

Therefore, listening to "Sanbyaku-rokujuu-go-nichi" for the first time, I just opined that Sakurai could still come up with epic ballads with tearjerking capabilities. It's not surprising that I've seen private YouTube videos of the song being the musical background for weddings. And according to the J-Wiki article on the album, the tune may not have been officially released as a single but it's treated as one of Mr. Children's trademark efforts.

As the NTT commercial attests, the song is all about maintaining those connections no matter how long the distance. "SENSE" went to No. 1 for 2 weeks straight and at the speed of warp became the 5th-ranked album for 2010 (I did say that it was released right on the first day of the last month), going Triple Platinum. It even hung in there to become the 36th-ranked album for 2011. Strangely enough, there were no singles released from the album at all with just a digital download available for one of the tracks, "fanfare".