Indeed, welcome to February! And as would be the case here in the Great White North, it's sunny but the temperature is currently a frigid -12 degrees Celsius with a -19-degree wind chill. Seeing the NHK weather caster in Tokyo do a cute shiver and say that the Japanese capital is faced with the deep freeze at +7 degrees C had me sighing. We Torontonians would kill for a +7 right now!
However, the skiers and snowboarders are definitely not crying the blues right now and they're most likely flocking like pigeons to the slopes north of us. There was quite a lot of snow falling in southern Ontario a few nights ago.
And that of course has reminded me of the connection between J-Pop and skiing. About a month ago, I posted up an Author's Picks regarding the popular ski songs which kinda centered on the ski boom days of the 80s and 90s. Well, relatively recently, a solo act called Nostalgic New Town (with lyricist/composer connie also as the vocalist, I'm assuming) came up with an enthusiastic tune in early 2023 that hearkens back to those lovely ski times and songs.
"Mafuyu no Winter Love" (Mid-winter Winter Love) reflects the nostalgia in Nostalgic New Town as I got reminded of the Queen of Winters, Kohmi Hirose（広瀬香美）, and even that duet between Hiroshi Takano（高野寛）and Takao Tajima（田島貴男）, "Winter's Tale ~ Fuyu Monogatari"（冬物語）. I can even hear a bit of an Earth Wind & Fire riff in there, too, although that could be heard as an aural version of the snow-dusted winds whipping up on the slopes.
I couldn't find much information on Nostalgic New Town aside from one blurb that's been repeated on other sites. Apparently back in 2022, a Niigata Prefecture metal manufacturing company known as Marudai launched a project called M.CREATE which collaborates with artists of various stripes and genres to create products under the concept of making fantasy into a reality, and Nostalgic New Town has been one of those creations. In the same year, NNT had also released a debut single titled "Seaside Breeze" which I'll have to check out soon enough.
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