Rika Tajima -- day after day

 

Joetsu（上越）happens to be the name of a city in Niigata Prefecture, and although I never lived in that province, I did live next door in Gunma Prefecture. That particular name does ring a bell, though, since it was also the name of the Bullet Train that I used to go to and from Tokyo. The Joetsu Shinkansen was about a 70-minute ride between Ueno Station in the megalopolis and our exceedingly large Jomo Kogen Station in the former town of Tsukiyono where I resided for two years.

Singer Rika Tajima（田嶋里香）actually hails from Joetsu City, Niigata Prefecture and it looks like she's the third "newcomer" in a row on KKP for this final day of February 2023. Her time as a singer was relatively brief, though, at four years between 1994 and 1998 during which she released nine singles and two albums. From her second album, "Greetings", came "day after day" which was written by Tajima herself and composed by Kingo Hamada（濱田金吾）.

There's no sign of Hamada's characteristic City Pop or jazz in "day after day". It's simply a very breezy and sunshine-y pop song sung in the same manner. I found out through a Joetsu City-based blog that in the year 2000, Tajima took on the name of Rika Kashiwagi（柏木里香）to become a narrator and then in the following year, she changed her name once more to Rika Morizaki（森咲里香）to continue her life in the geinokai. Supposedly, she had a bit role in Takeshi Kitano's（北野武）film "Dolls" in 2002 as an office employee in a park.