MANNA -- Gotanda

Over my years commuting through Tokyo, I think I've managed to get off at just about every station on the JR Yamanote Line. For those who don't know about it, the Yamanote is the loop line that goes around downtown Tokyo in about an hour. Of course, I'm quite familiar with the major stations such as Shinjuku, Tokyo, Akihabara and even the above Takadanobaba.

Gotanda Station is one stop on the Yamanote that's somewhere between Shibuya and Shinagawa Stations, and it's one of those places that perhaps I've gotten off at just once perhaps. It was only because my good foodie friend in Tokyo found this great hambaagu restaurant near the station that got all of us to make a stop there one Sunday night. Hambaagu would do that to me.

Well, strangely enough, I managed to find a song with the title of "Gotanda" and it was through MANNA's debut album "Chabako Trick" from 1979. I've actually already written about one other track from the album, and that was a cover of Tin Pan Alley's "Yellow Magic Carnival" which was also MANNA's debut single. 

Unlike the disco of that song, however, "Gotanda" is fairly straight and light pop...something to take a walk through Gotanda by. As I was listening to it for the first time, I wondered how it would sound covered by Akiko Yano（矢野顕子）since the arrangements sound as if it were made just for her. Well, oh, goofball me. It was indeed Yano who had wrote and composed the song for MANNA. The song fairly trips and skips quite happily through its four-and-a-half minutes.