cinnamons -- Summer Radio

 

As I've mentioned many a time on the blog, one of the very few things that I've not missed about my former life in Japan is the notoriously hot and humid summer. Summer festivals are lovely and frankly are nearly an obligatory plot setting in anime, and I actually do miss the incessant sounding of the cicadas in the latter part of the season. But the heat and humidity have been meteorological elements that I've been more than happy to do without, although the countermeasures have been fascinating, to be sure.

One of those countermeasures happen to be the wealth of vending machines in Japan including Tokyo. There are so many of them around that they deserve voting rights, and the gratitude that I had whenever I plunked in my coins or slipped in my bills is beyond simple expression. The two of them just steps away from my old Ichikawa apartment were my good buddies whenever I got home as I bought Max Coffee, Pocari Sweat or Calpis along with the usual cola. I had a couple of buddies from the old country who visited and while I was teaching during the day, the two of them did their walkabout of the megalopolis in the dog days of summer. Much to their horror, one of them was burning through his budget buying drinks every 500 metres on the street in Omotesando since he was feeling so hot; they thankfully escaped into a café before heatstroke truly took hold.

Regardless of my swooning over cold drinks in the hot summer, I've got some seasonal fare via cinnamons' "Summer Radio" which was a track on their debut EP "a.m.e" from January 2017. I guess that releasing the CD at that time must have been a counterintuitive measure to bring hope to the masses during the cold winter that sun and warmth were merely some months away. A twinkly keyboard sequence is underlaid by a funk/rock rhythm for Mariko Suzuki's（鈴木まりこ）floaty and effervescent vocals to create some upbeat alternative pop.

Here's hoping that my friends in Tokyo are hanging in there. I heard that high temperatures have been hitting 35 degrees Celsius without taking into account the Humidex.