Meiko Nakahara -- Happy Birthday, Love for You

 

Well, it is January 30th. At the risk of sounding like one of the closing segments for "Entertainment Tonight", the following people were born on this day: the 32nd President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1882, actor Gene Hackman in 1930, and Yumi Yoshimura（吉村由美）of the J-Pop duo Puffy in 1975.

And as crazy as it sounds, "Kayo Kyoku Plus" just turned 9 years old today. I swear that it doesn't look any older than 3.5, although in dog years, Fido would be beginning to collect an old-age pension. Moving on, Happy Birthday to my cute little kayo Frankenstein that got its start with the January 30th 2012 article on Jun Horie's（堀江淳）"Memory Glass"（メモリーグラス）. Furthermore, my thanks to all those who have given their articles over the years such as co-administrators Marcos V. and Noelle Tham, and contributors Larry Chan, Joana Bernardo, JTM and nikala (plus the newcomers in the last several weeks: Oliver and HRLE92), and those who have commented frequently including Jim Laker, Francium, Mike and Michael, Scott and Fireminer. We've all done our part for the blog and talked about our common love for Japanese popular music for almost a decade, and I'm looking forward to hitting the 10-year mark this time in 2022. Let's see if we can even reach 1000 articles by the end of this year...in a non-COVID environment.

Knowing that the 9th anniversary was coming up, I'd been wondering what I could for an article to commemorate the occasion. Then, I was catching some of the funnier moments in last year's anime "Ochikobore Fruit Tart"（おちこぼれフルーツタルト...Dropout Idol Fruit Tart） when this Future Funk-ified song came out as the outro for one of the videos. I knew it was sped up but it was still pretty darn catchy, so I decided to track down the source.

Indeed the source was Meiko Nakahara's（中原めいこ）"Happy Birthday, Love for You", the final track on the singer-songwriter's 7th album "Puzzle" from March 1987. Nakahara is someone that we've known as one of the City Pop representatives, but this is actually a slow and romantic straight-up pop ballad about giving those loving birthday wishes to someone who's currently off somewhere else. It's too bad about the parted status between the two lovebirds but if they did have the opportunity, they would be having that special dinner in an Italian or French restaurant somewhere in the Aoyama neighbourhood of Tokyo.

Heck, if I could take the KKP gang out somewhere to celebrate in Toronto, it would be to my favourite izakaya downtown, Kingyo, or somewhere in Greektown. I can only imagine what my dreams for the 10th would be like.