It's been my wont from time to time that I have reported on the local weather so I guess that this will be my first report of 2024. Yesterday, we were going through our first major bout of meteorological instability with an ugly mixture of snow and rain. We survived it of course but for several hours, we had been worried about the power going out. Things are thankfully much improved today but there will be a more regular snowstorm hitting us on the weekend.
Well, after checking out a B-side to a very early Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）single in the previous article, and it's always intriguing to go back and seek out a long-established singer's embryonic works, I decided to take the same approach with another singer...this time, City Pop crooner Junichi Inagaki（稲垣潤一）. It's been several months since I posted one of his songs onto the blog, so I believe he's been due.
And indeed, I went with the B-side for Inagaki's debut single "Ame no Regret"（雨のリグレット）from January 1982 which I posted in the summer of 2013. "Higurashiyama" (Mount Higurashi) is quite the different animal from its accompanying A-side which is a mellow City Pop number. It's made by the same duo behind "Ame no Regret", lyricist Reiko Yukawa（湯川れい子）and composer Kazuhiko Matsuo（松尾一彦）from Off-Course（オフコース）, but "Higurashiyama" isn't an urban contemporary number at all. In fact, I would say that it's an ethereal love ballad on a true mountain in Hokkaido overlooking Lake Ohnuma and the way that Inagaki delivers it, it sounds as if it could have made for a theme song of some animated fairy tale.
Ironically, when I wrote about "Ame no Regret" back then, there had been a similar major storm in Toronto the day previously although it was a summer deluge.
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