Haruka Tomatsu -- DELUXE DELUXE HAPPY

My opinions toward the city of Nagoya（名古屋）and the prefecture where it's located, Aichi（愛知県）, are that the region between Tokyo and Osaka has frequently gotten short shrift in terms of respect for some reason. I've got no idea why it gets the short end of the stick (think of two older brothers ganging up on the little one) although things have probably been turning upward recently of late with the interest in B-kyuu gurume（Ｂ級グルメ...cheap comfort food）and the fact that some of that Nagoya cuisine has been showing up in Tokyo.

When I was visiting Tokyo in 2017, my friends took me to a dessert place called Komeda's Coffee in East Shinjuku. Originating in Nagoya, the franchise has apparently gotten quite the national boost, especially for its Shiro Noir pastry (above).

In the late 1990s, I visited one of my old friends in Nagoya for a couple of days, and I found the city to have plenty of good things such as Nagoya Castle, Atsuta Shrine, a hotel whose dessert buffet introduced me to bread pudding for the first time in my life, and some of her own college buddies who were nothing but very hospitable to me.

This anime season, one of the shows that my friend and I have been watching is "Yatogame-chan Kansatsu Nikki"（八十亀ちゃんかんさつにっき...Yatogame-chan's Observation Diary） whose 3-minute episodes have involved a high school student, Jin Kaito（陣界斗）, transferring to Nagoya from Tokyo, and getting that "fish-out-of-water" treatment while he tries to adjust to life in the new city and to make nice with the title character, Monaka Yatogame（八十亀最中）, a local lass who seems to have a huge chip on her shoulder and sasses him in that heavy Nagoya accent.

The sole theme song at the end is "DELUXE DELUXE HAPPY" sung by the seiyuu for Yatogame, Haruka Tomatsu（戸松遥）who once voiced a PreCure a few years back and who actually comes from Aichi Prefecture. The song has got as much energy as Yatogame has, but happily without the ball-busting attitude. Perhaps considering the slag that Nagoya has gotten over the years, maybe it's not without reason that Yatogame-chan has been harsh on poor ol' Jin. Masaki Ando（安藤正基）, the manga artist for "Yatogame-chan", and Tanto Adachi（担当アダチ）came up with the lyrics while singer-songwriter Ayumi Tamura（田村歩美）composed the super-happy tune.

Anyways, you can read a Japan Times article on the whole thing about Nagoya right here.

Cure Fortune