Sario Kijima -- Watashi kara Kiss（私からKiss）

I was listening to my anime buddy's collection of anison when I heard this particularly pleasant pop song, the object of this article. Rather wondered which anime it belonged to.

Well as it turns out, Sario Kijima's（貴島サリオ）"Watashi kara Kiss" (A Kiss From Me) wasn't used as a theme song for an anime at all. According to her biography on J-Wiki, her 7th single from February 1995 was actually used as a commercial song for 7-11. It is quite a welcoming song for all those who love to enter convenience stores.

I kinda wondered, though, why my anime buddy would add this single to his collection but looking further into the single, the other two songs included on the disc were theme songs for the anime "KEY THE METAL IDOL" so I will have to take a closer look at those two later on. Kijima provided the lyrics while MRie composed the happy melody.

As for Kijima, she was born in Aichi Prefecture as Saori Ige（井下さおり...I hope that I got that family name right since there are a few different readings for it）and has parlayed her show business into not only singing and songwriting but also acting. She created the last name of her stage name by taking a couple of kanji characters from the popular sumo wrestler at the time, Takanohana（貴ノ花）, and a sumo stable Fujishima（藤島部屋）. Kijima then just gave a slight tweak to her real name Saori to form Sario.

Releasing 10 singles and 5 albums between 1992 and 1997, she seems to have been quite the popular singer for commercial jingles. "Watashi kara Kiss" peaked at No. 76 on Oricon.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find the specific 7-11 commercial featuring Kijima's cheerful song but did find a whole series of commercials for the convenience store chain between 1978 and 1994, thanks to the uploader soikll5. As someone who used to live in an Ichikawa neighbourhood with plenty of convenience stores, the nearby 7-11 stood out for the fact that it was the only shop that sold Eggo waffles. I couldn't leggo those Eggos since in Japan at the time, the round waffles were pretty hard to find. Of course, the bentos there were grand as well.