Toi et Moi -- Hatsukoi no Hito ni Niteiru（初恋の人に似ている）

"You look like my first love!"😲

Argh! How the heck do you respond to that?!😖 Uh...thank you? My condolences? Did he get to run around the bases?

But that is indeed the translation of the title for Toi et Moi's（トワ・エ・モワ）5th single from July 1970, "Hatsukoi no Hito ni Niteiru". There's no major existential consternation here though, folks. It's just some very simple innocent love as a young lady realizes that a man that she's met looks just like the fellow that she'd fallen for years earlier.

Well, maybe I was being a little too optimistic about my earlier reassurance in the previous paragraph. There is some existential consternation to grapple with according to the lyrics as the lady wonders whether she should even admit this observation to him, and of course, whether she's falling in love again although this is a completely different lad. Ahhh...the trials and tribulations of l'amour.💝

Written by Osamu Kitayama（北山修）and composed by Kazuhiko Kato（加藤和彦）of The Folk Crusaders, "Hatsukoi no Hito ni Niteiru" is a comfortable ballad that has a bit of country-western infused into its folk, and I do love that sharp trumpet that starts the ball rolling. On Oricon, it made it all the way up to No. 30, but a few months later, Emiko Shiratori（白鳥英美子）and Sumio Akutagawa（芥川澄夫）would do even better with their next single, "Dare mo Inai Umi"（誰もいない海）, the very first song by them that I put onto the blog all the way back in 2012.