Teresa Teng -- Furusato wa Doko desu ka（ふるさとはどこですか）

 

I was out for most of the day today with my anime buddy in a special one-off return to those old biweekly anime-and-meal Sundays that we used to have back in the 2010s. So we got to have some Taiwanese lu rou fan for lunch and then for dinner, it was some scrumptious lamb dumplings at a Chinese Halal restaurant. 

We also got some anime from this spring season to watch and also I got to see a lot of my buddy's footage when he went on his latest sojourn to Japan back in May. One place he visited to apply his photography hobby was Fukushima Prefecture, and he just happened to get off at Aizu-Miyashita Station（会津宮下駅）on the Tadami Line（只見線）since from there he could get a great view of a special train bridge to take shots of. The above is brief footage by YouTube uploader jo “JO68” oku of that station from a few years ago.

Pretty quiet back then but when my friend left the station early last month, he heard some strangely familiar music and it turned out that a music plaque memorial or kahi（歌碑）as it's said in Japanese had been erected across from the station only last November. It turned out that it was a memorial for the late Taiwanese singer Teresa Teng（テレサテン）.

What was playing from the plaque was Teng's 8th single in Japan, "Furusato wa Doko desu ka" (Where is Your Hometown?), which was released in February 1977. It's been categorized as an enka and a kayo kyoku although I think in terms of its arrangement, it sounds more toward the latter genre. The tenderhearted song was written by Daisaburo Nakayama（中山大三郎）and composed by Yoshinori Usui（うすいよしのり）and it managed to peak at No. 42 on Oricon.

Now as for why Teng's music plaque was placed at Aizu-Miyashita Station can be explained by where the station is located which is the town of Mishima in Fukushima Prefecture. Back when the single was released, Teng visited Mishima to do a concert and was so moved by the kindness of the residents there that she considered it to be her Japanese hometown. The town also made the singer an honorary resident.