Hiroshi Tayama -- Tsumi no Umi（罪の海）

Back on Saturday, I got together with one of my old university friends of over 30 years running, Laura, and her family to see "Captain Marvel". It was a solid origin movie right in the middle of the Marvel pack, and it was good to see Samuel L. Jackson as a younger and much more lighthearted Nick Fury while the tribute to the late Stan Lee was a lovely touch.

I was also lucky enough to receive some omiyage from Laura in the form of some Hokkaido Melon Caramels and this autographed CD by enka singer Hiroshi Tayama（田山ひろし）. For those KKP readers with a steel-trap memory, you may remember Tayama as this singer that I had written about almost 3 years ago when he came to perform at the Toronto Buddhist Church. Well, he's released quite a few more singles after that.

The CD represents his 2017 single "Ore ni Kiku na yo"（俺に聞くなよ...Don't Ask Me）and the coupling song is "Tsumi no Umi" (Sea of Sin). I could only find karaoke takes and cover versions of the main song but I was able to find a video of him singing "Tsumi no Umi", a song of woe over a lost relationship, presumably from the title, due to some horrible mistake. It's a pretty elegant enka created by Miwa Ito and Junpei Oda（伊藤美和・小田純平）that may earn that category of European Enka through the arrangement.

Good to see and hear Tayama still plugging away at his craft. I hope that he does eventually get that big breakthrough hit in the near future.