Junko Ohashi -- Itsumo（いつも）

Another weekend is coming to a close here in the Eastern Standard Time zone, and it was a nice balmy day. Good to spend the day with old friends today at a pub that's becoming more and more OUR pub because of the frequency of our visits. The Bishop & Belcher downtown has plenty of good fare and certainly the food can make some of us become that second name quite easily.😋

The song for this article had me thinking about another Junko Ohashi（大橋純子）tune that was composed by her husband, Ken Sato（佐藤健）. "Nemurenai Diamond"（眠れないダイヤモンド）from 1988 for me is the quintessential City Pop number for the late 1980s with that arrangement of a champagne-and-caviar night out in the megalopolis during Bubble Era Japan. A fun time is to be had in either Ginza or Akasaka when listening to this one.

Some 14 years previous to the above though, Ohashi sang a tune that was both written and composed by Sato titled "Itsumo" (Always) from her June 1974 album "Feeling Now" (and in fact, this is probably the earliest song that I've done from her long discography). "Itsumo" has a much more humbler, more wistful and more soulful arrangement, and listening to it, there's that sensation of walking home at sunset either in Tokyo or New York City. Another day of hard work is done, so it's Miller Time! Perhaps it can also herald the leadup to a get-together with the guys for a drink in the pub, much like what happened with my group today.

The poignant feeling of "Itsumo" also has me thinking about how Ohashi has been doing over the past couple of years since getting that cancer diagnosis back in 2018. I hope that she's on the mend.