Sayuri Ishikawa -- Osaka Tsubame（大阪つばめ）

I only heard the news within the last half-hour on NHK but apparently Osaka won the rights to hold the 2025 Expo. Many congratulations to them. My first trip to Osaka was 2 years after the 1970 Expo and from that event, I found out about the famous song by the late Haruo Minami（三波春夫）, "Sekai no Kuni Kara Konnichiwa" (世界の国からこんにちは）which became the theme tune.

Now, since I've already written about that legendary kayo and because no theme tune obviously has been created for the 2025 Expo yet, I've had to scrounge around YouTube to see if I could come up with a new Osaka tune in tribute to the happy news (I've actually written up about a number of other Osaka-based tunes).

Well, I've decided to go with Sayuri Ishikawa's（石川さゆり）"Osaka Tsubame" (Osaka Swallow). It's been a while since Noelle or I have put up a song by the veteran enka singer, and I had never heard this one before although it was released in February 1986 as her 42nd single. It's a perfectly mellow enka tune in love with the city, and the use of a bird in the title and song simply reiterates a theme for a lot of these kayo of using birds to represent a longing for a certain area or a loneliness within a person who can't seem to settle down in one place. I think along with tsubame, the kamome (seagull) is another popular bird in these songs.

"Osaka Tsubame" was written by Osamu Yoshioka（吉岡治）and composed by Chiaki Oka（岡千秋）. Folks, if you're heading for Osaka in the next number of years for the first time, you're gonna love the food there.