Hiroko Taniyama -- Tempura☆Sunrise（てんぷら☆さんらいず）

 

Of course, having been exposed to Japanese dishes for my entire life, I am always going to love my sushi, tempura and sukiyaki. I hit my fair share of kaiten sushi places throughout my time in Tokyo but I saw the restaurants serving tempura and sukiyaki as being special occasion places. Therefore, for the former dish, hitting places like Ten-Kuni was a gastronomic joy. I was also a fan of ten-don...the dish of large shrimp tempura doused in special sauce and placed on a bowl of rice.

Speaking of tempura, I found this quirky little song by veteran singer-songwriter Hiroko Taniyama（谷山浩子） that was her 11th single from April 1982 titled "Tempura☆Sunrise". In fact, it was so quirky-sounding that despite knowing of Taniyama's ability to create songs, I swore that the arrangement was such that Akiko Yano（矢野顕子）must have had something to do with its creation. I mean, "Tempura☆Sunrise" sounds just like a Yano song of that time.

However, indeed it was Taniyama behind words and music, and what's more, the lightly technopop sound arrangement could be all laid at the feet of the one-time duo Tohoku Shinkansen（東北新幹線）, aka musician Hiroshi Narumi（鳴海寛）and composer Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）! Yes, the same duo behind the classic City Pop/AOR album "Thru Traffic" from that same year. Not sure whether the three parties decided whether they had wanted to do a Yano-esque song, although hearing some of the high-pitched chorus about two-thirds of the way through is a big hint.

The quirkiness even goes into how Taniyama's lyrics were fashioned. Most of them were made into katakana for some bizarre reason. Usually when katakana is used in a manga or other literary form, it's so that it displays a non-Japanese trying to speak Japanese in a somewhat broken form, and yet Taniyama sings it as smoothly as ever. Another question that I have is whether the singer was trying to be literal about this magical restaurant in Tokyo (Shinjuku Station and Omotesando are sung out) serving up some fine meals or whether the megalopolis itself is the menu. Can't really say that it's a City Pop song, though.

From about 1:25