MANNA -- Onaka Suita ne（おなかすいたね）

 

As I mentioned in the article for Akiko Yano's（矢野顕子）"Cream Stew"（クリーム・シチュー）, I rather preferred the beefier taste of minestrone soup over cream stew, a dish that I only found out about in Japan along with corn potage soup at a McDonalds near the Tokyo Prince Hotel back in 1981. Cream stew has been hit-or-miss with me. I've had some very nice bowls of the stuff but then I've had other examples which could be compared to umami-filled Elmer's Glue. However, it seems like cream stew is the go-to slurping dish in Japan because just like clockwork, commercials for the stew start popping up like the mushrooms that may go into it once the colder months arrive.

Yano's "Cream Stew" was used for a House Foods cream stew commercial in 1997 but a few years earlier, singer-songwriter MANNA, who I've usually associated with the quirky 1980 technopop tune "Tokio Tsushin"（TOKIO通信）, came up with the wholesome "Onaka Suita ne" (Boy, I'm Hungry) as a single in September 1993. Even more than the playful "Cream Stew", the folksy arrangement of "Onaka Suita ne" brings the images of kids running as fast as possible through the cold weather to hit home and kitchen to have a steaming bowl of cream stew. 

Norie Kanzawa（神沢礼江）was responsible for the heartwarming lyrics while MANNA herself took care of the melody. I'm not sure how well "Onaka Suita ne" did on Oricon but the song has been mentioned on her J-Wiki file as one of her trademark tunes.