Ikimonogakari -- Joyful（じょいふる）

Earlier today, I got together with fellow "Kayo Kyoku Plus" collaborator Larry Chan for lunch with a translator friend, and no, the above food item wasn't the main dish (although I do like Pocky very much...try the choco-banana). Actually, the three of us went for our favourite Japanese food item, ramen, at Santouka downtown. With the temperatures having chilled down somewhat, it was good weather to have the noodles. I ended up having gyoza, shio ramen, zangi don and then just down the street for dessert, I finished up my afternoon repast with carrot cake and coffee. Indeed, I was quite joyful.

I was going to make a smooth segue here from the last word in the first paragraph, but I do have to mention that the three of us also spoke on the Kohaku Utagassen back on Monday. We all agreed that it was one of the better shows, and I remarked that the band Ikimonogakari（いきものがかり）was unusually chipper; actually, I should say that they were super-cheerful in their performance of the song "Joyful" which was their 15th single.

Not being a dedicated fan of Ikimonogakari, my impression was that the band specialized in heartfelt dramatic ballads such as one of my favourites by them, "Yell", that Larry had covered with his own anecdote back on December 30th. My friend happily assured me that the band is very capable of doing very uptempo stuff, and that was certainly the case with "Joyful" which was strangely enough the coupling song for "Yell".

Whereas "Yell" is an introspective ballad on life through past, present and future written and composed by band guitarist Yoshiki Mizuno（水野良樹）, "Joyful" is all about partying it up as if it were 2009, which is when the single was released in September that year, and this is also a Mizuno creation. Heck, even the exhortation for the audience to jump up and boogie all about is written into the lyrics themselves. I guess in that way, "Joyful" is more of a Western approach to enjoying New Year's Eve compared to December 31st in Japan, although I think things are gradually changing. According to the J-Wiki article for the single, Mizuno had apparently whipped up "Joyful" rather excitedly and according to vocalist Kiyoe Yoshioka（吉岡聖恵）, the lad was jumping off the ground when he brought the finished product over.

"Yell/Joyful" managed to hit No. 2 on Oricon and became the 66th-ranked single for 2009. It even hung about to end up as the 149th-ranked single for 2010. "Joyful" was used in a Pocky commercial (hence the photo at the top), and when I read that in J-Wiki, I went naruhodo since I remembered all of those Pocky ads with then-teenage actress Yui Aragaki（新垣結衣）dancing spritely all over the screen, but it was actually the band itself which was bopping about when "Joyful" was used. As well, the song has been used in a number of music games such as "pop'n music" and "GUITARFREAKS".