Shigeru Suzuki -- Rainy Station（レイニー・ステイション）

Although this song was first recorded probably some two decades before the arrival of the bayside community of Odaiba in Tokyo, "Rainy Station" has that beachside feeling along the lines of a Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）feel-good song.

"Rainy Station" is the first track on singer-musician-songwriter Shigeru Suzuki's（鈴木茂）4th album "Caution!" from January 1978, and sure enough, the former member of Happy End provided the uptempo melody which would fit a summer car ride down to Shonan. His former bandmate, Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）, has spun a different story, though. Apparently the lyrics deal with a man taking his supposedly soon-to-be-former girlfriend to the station during a rainy day and getting ready to make his goodbyes.

But the crafty devil seems to know the tropes quite well and he even points that out in the words, since when the young lady is just about to board the train, she ends up doing an about-face and crumpling into his chest in tears. Just couldn't part from him. Somehow I can see him looking directly into the camera while he's reassuring his girlfriend and giving a knowing wink. Maybe the clouds are about to break.

According to the YouTube video's explanation, Suzuki had a lot of famous musicians helping out on "Rainy Station", which was also his 2nd single released in 1978. Keyboardists Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）and Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）, bassist Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）, and percussionist Nobu Saito（斉藤ノブ）among others were there, and I'm assuming that they were also contributing to at least some of the other tracks on "Caution!".