J-Canuck's Around The World in (about) 32 Minutes

Going to be dating myself yet again but my favourite version of the theme song from the motion picture "Around The World in 80 Days" is Arthur Fiedler & The Boston Pops' enthusiastic take on the Victor Young original. It's epic, sweeping, romantic and has that nice flavouring of Latin spice. I first heard it on that collection of standard LPs that we got when my parents purchased the humongous RCA stereo player, and through multiple listenings of The Pops' version, it's basically imprinted itself as the version for me.

A few nights ago, I listened to Rocket Brown's latest mixtape of City Pop favourites. This time, his theme was New York so he had folks such as Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）, Casiopea and Hi-Fi Set to entertain me before bedtime. The next day, I thought about making my latest Author's Picks article and basing it not just on songs about The Big Apple, but on a variety of kayo having to do with those far-flung places outside of Japan. There have been plenty of them, y'know.

On that note, then...let's take a flight.

1. Masaaki Hirao & Yoko Hatanaka -- Canada kara no Tegami (1978)

Well, I just had to start from my nation, eh? Still don't know what had composer and singer Masaaki Hirao（平尾昌晃）decide that The Great White North would make for the ideal setting for a hit kayo, but hey, if it helped inbound tourism to places like Banff and Toronto, all the better. It certainly worked out for the duo of Hirao and Hatanaka.

2. Junko Yagami -- Purpletown ~ You Oughta Know By Now (1980)

Let's take that one-hour flight from Pearson International in my hometown over to Manhattan, and we've come to "Purpletown", a love letter of sorts to The Big Apple (although I never found out why the colour purple was significant for New York City) Indeed, it was the JAL campaign song for tours to ol' Gotham, and just from all that fun funk by Yagami（八神純子）, Foster, Kennedy and Conrad, I can only hope that a lot of Japanese tourists were happily lured over the Pacific.

3. Judy Ongg -- Miserarete (1979)

Well, it was done to me decades ago, but whenever I hear about the Aegean Sea, in a downright Pavlovian fashion, I will always remember Judy Ongg's（ジュディ・オング） most famous hit "Miserarete"（魅せられて）. It stands as one of the most famous examples of that exotic kayo involving adventures in those far-flung places that was the trend back in the late 1970s. Perhaps it helped draw Japanese tourists to Greece. Perhaps it also helped in sales of billowing white dresses.

4. Mayo Shouno -- Tonde Istanbul (1978)

A relatively short hop from Greece to another representative exotic kayo, Mayo Shouno's（庄野真代）"Tonde Istanbul"（飛んでイスタンブール）. I'm not sure whether the melody by the prolific Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）actually reflected Turkish music but it certainly sounded adventurous enough. One piece of trivia from the J-Wiki article for the song that I hadn't included in the original article was that Tsutsumi had actually created "Tonde Istanbul" for 70s aidoru Goro Noguchi（野口五郎）but later realized that a female vocalist would do better justice with his work.

5. Makoto Matsushita -- One Hot Love (1981)

As I hinted in the original article for the album "First Light" by Makoto Matsushita（松下誠）, the first time that I heard "One Hot Love", I didn't think of downtown Tokyo but downtown Los Angeles. There was something so Airplay, Doobie Brothers and a ton of other AOR artists imbued into this classic that the ghost of my old SONY radio almost materialized in front of my eyes. It didn't help that the original cover for the album is composed of a glorious photo of LA (at least, I think it's LA). How West Coast sound is that?

6. Hiromi Go -- Aishuu no Casablanca (1982)

Honestly speaking, I never think of Rick and Ilsa when I listen to "Aishuu no Casablanca"（哀愁のカサブランカ）, but there's that feeling of traveling far afield to places surrounding the Mediterranean and enjoying a truly luxurious night. I'm just surprised that one of Hiromi Go's（郷ひろみ）trademark hits was never used to sell something like an airplane tour, a car or a cologne. The video above has a newly arranged version of the song.

7. Yumi Matsutoya -- Hong Kong Night Sight (1981)

We're finally jumping over to Asia and visiting Hong Kong, a place that I thoroughly enjoyed for a few days with my students over a decade ago. Yuming's cover of her husband's original tune seems to encapsulate a first-timer's visit to the famed area with all of the starry-eyed observations of places like Kowloon and Central. I thought that this was more "Blade Runner" than any place in Japan. I hope that Hong Kong will recover from not only COVID-19 but also the political turmoil that it had been wracked with even earlier.

8. Taeko Ohnuki -- Tsumuji Kaze (1982)

Our final destination is somewhere in France, perhaps The City of Light itself. The reason being the final song is Taeko Ohnuki's（大貫妙子）"Tsumuji Kaze"（つむじ風）, a track from her 1982 album "Cliché". Aside from that synthpop intro, everything else about it just has that fragrance of Maurice Chevalier's and Charles Boyer's Paris. Croissants and café au lait come to mind here.

When deplaning, make sure you haven't left any of your belongings. Just follow the signs over to Immigration and Customs. Hopefully, in the not-too-distant future, we will all be able to hear the first two sentences again for real.