Taro Hakase -- Himawari（ひまわり）

 

The first time that I ever had okonomiyaki（お好み焼）was when I was on that 1981 graduation trip from the Toronto Japanese Language School as a teen. I was spending three days with my host family associated with Tezukayama Girls' High School in Nara and they were kind enough to take me to lunch at an (Osaka-style) okonomiyaki restaurant. 

It was an amazing experience seeing my host sister, Akiko, pouring the thick and chunky batter onto the teppan（鉄板）hot plate built into our table. As it turned into something like a pancake through a few practiced flips, she finalized everything by slathering on the sauce, squirting the Kewpie mayo, sprinkling the bonito flakes so they looked like they were waving at everyone and finally a few shakes of ground nori. For a Japanese-Canadian who was used to having his pancakes with butter and maple syrup, the savory okonomiyaki was a gastronomic revelation.

Years later, as a working teacher in the Tokyo area, I'd already had my share of okonomiyaki but it was my first time to have the Hiroshima-style version when my friends took me to a restaurant in trendy Shimo-Kitazawa. Visitors will believe once and for all that a huge half-head of cabbage and a ton of yakisoba can be cooked down into a golden brown mix of flour and other ingredients. But why not have a watch of the above video by WAO RYU!ONLY in JAPAN and compare the two types?

Now, why am I expressing my okonomiyaki dreams out loud? Well, this 2010 NHK morning serial drama "Teppan"（てっぱん）has to do with a young lady who wants to open her own okonomiyaki restaurant in Osaka. The theme song "Himawari" (Sunflower) was recently performed once more on "Uta Con"（うたコン）by its composer, violinist Taro Hakase（葉加瀬太郎）, and though I haven't really been a purveyor of the asadora（朝ドラ）, "Himawari" has been a rather familiar song to me.

Sounding as comfortable and homey as a visit to an actual neighbourhood okonomiyaki restaurant, I can imagine that "Himawari" pretty much set the tone for the drama. The first half of the song has that innocent and homey feel before things go off on a tangent of jazzy self-exploration and then so that things don't get too self-indulgent, Hakase pulls back to the innocence once more. There's also something in the percussion that made me think that there was also something Okinawan in the arrangement. It's been placed as a song on Hakase's 14th album "Emotionism" from September 2010. The album, which peaked at No. 25 on Oricon, has been categorized as a New Age product on J-Wiki, and maybe I will eventually put up that genre onto Labels, but for now, I'll just place it as a jazz and pop song.