Akira Kurosawa & Los Primos -- Nurete Yokohama（ぬれて横浜）

One sage lesson that I learned when I was having a weekend in Yokohama occurred as I was touring through the city's Chinatown. It was about early evening and I decided that I would get some dinner before heading back to my hotel in Sakuragicho, some 20 minutes walk up from the area. Well, there was a Chinese buffet restaurant near the East Gate, and of course back then, buffet was the gift that kept on giving for me. An old friend of mine used to tease me mercilessly about whenever I arrived at the doors of a buffet restaurant, the staff would go on Defcon 1 and breathlessly order more food. One of them would probably yell into the phone, "Is the Hercules on the ground yet?!".

Well, seeing it was about 5pm, that Chinatown restaurant had just opened for the evening service and I was the first one in the door. And I would be the only one in the door for nearly the 90 minutes that I was allotted to graze. I did get my Peking duck, spring rolls, shredded jellyfish, wonton soup, radish cakes, siu mai, etc. but at the cost of being watched by the restaurant staff as they looked at me with a look of incredulity and pity as I emulated an anthromorphized stomach. C'mon, I rationalized. I had to make it worth the 3000 yen I've invested. Still, I was oh-so-relieved when customers began coming in at around 6 although I think they thought I was the owner. In addition, I actually pulled off the rare action of rolling out sheepishly. So, the moral of the story was never be the first one to go into a buffet restaurant, and time one's arrival more fashionably.

Continuing with the Yokohama theme here, the city has always been another metropolis that is very Mood Kayo-friendly. Case in point: "Nurete Yokohama" (Drench Me, Yokohama) by Akira Kurosawa & Los Primos（黒沢明とロス・プリモス）, released as their 38th single in June 1979. This is so Mood Kayo and if someone asked me what the Japanese music genre sounds like, this is one song that I would introduce. With the heightened "wa-wa-wa" chorus by Los Primos, the boozy saxophone and Tetsuro Hoshino's（星野哲郎）lyrics literally begging for precipitation to wash away a fellow's post-romance woes, the song almost falls into self-parody. My compliments to Motoyoshi Kawaguchi's（川口元義）music for bringing that sensation of needing to get to a bar ASAP to drown one's sorrows in drink.

Didn't end up in a bar the night of my buffet. Since I barely drink, I just waddled my way up to the hotel and hit the bed.