Miyuki Utsumi -- Sepia Moon（セピアムーン）

Another Friday night and I'm quite happy to be at home digesting a juicy tenderloin steak. I quite deserved it, too, since I had a humongous bunch of files to translate this morning and afternoon, but I got it done and basically I should be free and easy for the weekend.

If I actually could drink hard liquor, a nice sherry would be just the thing right now. But instead, I will be more than happy with the melodic equivalent, and that would be Miyuki Utsumi's（内海みゆき）"Sepia Moon".

I had forgotten that Noelle wrote up the first Miyuki Utsumi article for "Kayo Kyoku Plus" almost a couple of years ago. Utsumi had come up with her 1982 hit "Yopparachatta"（酔っぱらっちゃった）, a fun and party-hearty kayo that had that old-fashioned edge.

Well, last night I found this other Utsumi song from the other end of that decade. I don't know if it did become another hit for her but it's quite pleasing to me. "Sepia Moon" was the title track for her 1989 album and not only did Utsumi change the writing for her name but this particular ballad took her more into the late 80s/early 90s sophisti-pop when compared to "Yopparachatta". So I guess it was less izakaya and more rooftop hotel bar. Plus I gotta say that in the first few bars of the song, she almost sounded like Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）!

Couldn't find out much more than that for the tune. Not even who was responsible for words and music. Still, "Sepia Moon" goes down smooth.