Ken Tamura -- Wasurete Oshimai（わすれておしまい）

I no longer watch "NCIS" since that was more of something that I enjoyed while living in Japan, but yeah, I got to know Gibbs, DiNozzo and the gang over the years, and it was nice to hear that Ziva has returned to the fold in some capacity after a few seasons away. There was one episode, though, quite early in its run when Jenny Shepard was running NCIS (yep, even before Leon) and it was close to the end of her time as director. There was some code word being bandied about between Gibbs and Shepard: Oshimaida. It didn't take too long for me to figure that oshimaida（お仕舞いだ）was Japanese for "This is the end."

Well, heck, the phrase is now seared into my mind now and so whenever I hear it anywhere else such as in a Japanese drama, I'm always going to remember that episode "Judgment Day". Guess what? It's in the title for Ken Tamura's（ケン田村）ballad "Wasurete Oshimai" (Forget and Finish).

A track from Tamura's 1981 debut album "Light Ace", the brief memory of that code word quickly faded to be replaced by the feeling of an Eagles song. There is that "lonesome cowboy" arrangement by Masaki Omura（大村雅朗）for Tamura's words and music, and that old-fashioned balladry can't be beat with the piano, strings, guitar and saxophone in there. I'm a sucker for such arrangements, I gather, and one other example is Saburo Tokito's（時任三郎）"Kawa no Nagare wo Daite Nemuritai" (川の流れを抱いて眠りたい）which came out in the same year.

"Light Ace" also has a song that I've already covered some years ago, "Inemuri"（いねむり）. As for "Wasurete Oshimai", considering the fate of Jenny, this song wouldn't have been a bad accompaniment in tribute at the end of the Japanese broadcast of "Judgment Day".