Ayako Suzukawa -- Go! Shinkansen（GO！新幹線）

 

Well, ten years ago, I commemorated the 50th anniversary of the launch of the very first Bullet Train on October 1st 1964 with the 1967 song "Hashire Chotokkyu"（はしれ ちょうとっきゅう）which has been very kid-friendly. 

News on the 60th anniversary of the pride and joy of Japan Railways has been showing up on NHK over the past couple of days including a special one-hour show earlier this morning. The above video by JR Tokai ought to also have train otakus' eyes glistening.

For "Hashire Chotokkyu", I related one of my experiences on the ol' Shinkansen. One regret is that I didn't get to go on as many rides on the Bullet as I could have during my very long stint in Japan between 1994 and 2011 (although I was riding the Joetsu Shinkansen monthly while I was living in Gunma Prefecture between 1989 and 1991). Still, there was that one time in 1990 when I had to attend the Renewers' Conference for the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme in Kobe. We took the Tokaido Bullet from Tokyo Station and we had some pretty decent seats. However, one of my colleagues who was a CIR (Coordinator for International Relations) got his own suite and he was most generous in inviting us over for a while. It was basically a moving lounge so some of us enjoyed some drinks.

I will commemorate the 60th anniversary by putting up this also kid-friendly song titled "Go! Shinkansen" which was written and recorded last year by Ayako Suzukawa（鈴川絢子）with the composer being Akinori Suzuki（鈴木秋則）. The Chiba Prefecture-born Suzukawa is a YouTuber and a comedienne who is also a huge train fan. Therefore, I'm pretty sure that she's been on a lot of those frequent train-focused variety programs. 

Her YouTube channel, unsurprisingly, has a lot of similarly-themed videos including this one where she is heading from Tsuruga City to Kinosaki Hot Springs on a tourist train.