Now that I'm writing this on May 1st, it is International Workers' Day and a few days into the Golden Week holidays in Japan but here in Canada, it just means the day that we commiserate after filing our tax returns on time the day before. At least this year it's a Saturday so we can watch sports on television.
I was looking for a May-themed song as such and it didn't take me too long before I found this lovely mellow tune by the late supremely voiced Kiyohiko Ozaki（尾崎紀世彦）. "Furusato no Go-gatsu" (May in the Hometown). This was Ozaki's penultimate single released in April 1995, and I gather that this was perfect for Golden Week since in normal years, people would be heading back to the old hometown by planes, trains and automobiles. "Furusato no Go-gatsu" was created by a couple of vets, lyricist Akira Ohtsu and composer Kisaburo Suzuki（大津あきら・鈴木キサブロー）, and there is something indeed very 70s folksy and homey about it, despite its 1995 release date. Not surprisingly, it was used in NHK's "Minna no Uta"（みんなのうた）series for children.
For a complete change of pace, I've actually got a song by Ozaki that I had unfortunately forgotten to include during the Xmas period last year since it is indeed a song for the Yuletide. "Christmas Etranger" rings all sorts of bells of memory whether they belong to Frank Sinatra, the Manhattan Transfer and maybe even any of the swing jazz that Seth MacFarlane has performed within his characters in "Family Guy". This is indeed one song that illustrates how much I love jazz and Xmas together.
Written by Masako Arikawa（有川正沙子）and composed by Yuji Ohno（大野雄二）, "Christmas Etranger" was originally included in the November 1992 "Lupin the Third in Christmas" album for the long-running anime franchise. However, the song was also inserted as a bonus track in Ozaki's March 1980 "Kaze no Graffiti"（風のグラフィティー）probably because Ohno was actually the producer for that album.
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