Mikio Masuda -- One for Lucia

It's been a warm and dry day today in Toronto. I met up with a couple of old friends for some brunch down on The Danforth earlier this morning and given the choice of going for the outdoor patio and keeping things inside, one of them quickly let everyone know that he wanted to dine in air-conditioned comfort. Both he and I can then sympathize with my friends over in the Tokyo area. Yesterday, knowing what the weather is like over there, I sent my good wishes to them over social media and hoped that they were keeping cool. The response has been pretty big that it's been a struggle, and from my experience, there could be several more weeks of the sultry stuff.

When the low temperature in summer in the big city in the wee hours is usually around 26 to 28 degrees Celsius, yeah, I could say that it's a smokin' night. Speaking of that, I've got another track from the Mikio Masuda（益田幹夫）collection via the jazz pianist's album "Smokin' Night" (1987). To add onto his "Romantic Rain" that I wrote about last year, this is the first track, "One for Lucia".

Soothing and perhaps even cooling like a Japanese summer wind chime, it may not have as great as an effect as a stiff breeze coming in through the house, but it's pretty nice to hear while sipping down that glass of ice water...or something stronger. For today's brunch, I just kept things to multiple cups of coffee.