Tatsuhiko Yamamoto -- Fuyu no Umi e（冬の海へ）

It's a stretch to say that my brief anecdote has anything to do with this song, but years ago when my good friend was living close to Lake Ontario in the community of Port Credit, the two of us along with another old friend went over in the dead of winter to the edge of Toronto's own Great Lake that was only about 10 minutes' walk from his apartment. Basically, there were no lights in the area; we were just staring into the abyss of darkness. My friends mirthfully noted that I looked fairly freaked out, something that I will indeed confess to being since frankly when I couldn't see anything remotely looking like the United States of America on the other side, I did wonder whether this was the equivalent of viewing oblivion. Obviously, the fact that a cold wind was blowing with plenty of sound and fury helped "enhance" the mood of doom.

Anyways, I'm certainly thinking that crooner Tatsuhiko Yamamoto's（山本達彦）"Fuyu no Umi e" (To The Winter Sea) is a whole lot more comforting. Looking through his J-Wiki list of singles, I couldn't find any sight of it, but the uploader for this particular video mentioned that this was an extra song on his March 1994 album "Trade Wind".

Despite the year of its recording, there is something in the arrangement that had me thinking that "Fuyu no Umi e" sounds more like a tune from a decade prior or even longer back in the past. Not sure how much of the instruments are synthesizers but there's that flugelhorn in there to give that old-fashioned AOR feeling. Singer-songwriter Masayuki Kishi（岸正之）came up with the music while Yumi Yoshimoto（吉本由美）provided the lyrics. For a song title that refers to a walk in the cold months, there's something nice and warm about it, thanks to Yamamoto's honeyed vocals.