Bread & Butter -- Kakure Basho（隠れ場所）

 

During my last years in Japan, the doner kebab was something of a celeb target for the foodies of which there are tens of millions in the nation. The above photo isn't a great one since it seems to focus on a couple of guys I don't know but behind those two and the rest of the maddening crowd, there is a whole cluster of doner kebab trucks. Well, many months before, I used to know this one lone truck in an alley among the buildings of Akihabara that I frequented during my visits to the electronics goods area. There were a few other customers there, but basically I savored that truck as my own little refuge of foodie paradise.

In my previous article, Kalapana Black Sand Beach（カラパナ・ブラック・サンド・ビーチ）was a former paradise before a volcano spoiled the fun there thirty-five years ago. But it looks like the veteran singing duo Bread & Butter（ブレッド＆バッター）featuring the Iwasawa Brothers have their own "Kakure Basho" (Refuge). They came up with this mellow song for their April 2005 album "Sky"; it sounds timeless as if it could have been created for any of their past albums going back to 1980. It's so laidback (even the trumpeter at the end must have been lying in a hammock) that I swear that the boys must have been in a Hawaii state of mind when they came up with it. Maybe the Aloha State is their refuge or perhaps it's some place a whole lot closer such as the resort city of Hakone.