Akiko Ikuina -- Omedetou（オ・メ・デ・ト・ウ!）

It's been an interesting decade and a half since I got back from Japan for good since at about the same time, Japanese gastronomy as it applies to my hometown really started to evolve. During my childhood, it was all about the generalist Japanese restaurant which covered everything through courses such as the teriyaki course, the tempura one and the sushi one. But then from around 2011 or 2012, various ramen chains that started from Vancouver made their way across Canada to Toronto starting with Kinton and that made a huge splash. Then, it was the izakaya boom, Japanese cheesecake and then more specialized fare including udon and tonkatsu.

At least some of these restaurants have also been aware of the Japanese pop culture scene. Kingyo, when it was a full izakaya at the time, decorated its walls with pachinko machines and used to play anime on its back wall, and recently as a converted izakaya/food store, it's had a playlist of Japanese music coming through the speakers.

In the past year or so, there's even been a new place that's brought a bit of Japanese into the old-fashioned diner and even it has mentioned its own Spotify playlist. It's quite the bounty and Cafe Citypop has stuff including Junko Yagami's（八神純子）boppy "Jealous" and Kirinji's（キリンジ）snazzy "Hi Zero Wa Game" (非ゼロ和ゲーム...Non-Zero Sum Game). But it's not all City Pop and I was able to find one song in the list that I hadn't heard before.

Akiko Ikuina's（生稲晃子）"Omedetou" (Congratulations) is a track from her 2nd and final album to date, "Nihon "Ikuina" Kikou"（日本「生稲」紀行...Japan "Ikuina" Travelogue） which was released in August 1989 to a No. 33 ranking on Oricon. "Omedetou" may not be a City Pop tune per se, but it sure is catchy and refined. And as soon as I saw the arranging and composing credits belonging to Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）from Tohoku Shikansen（東北新幹線）fame, I knew that I was going to get something infectiously good. It's got the nice slow-to-medium-tempo groove and an effective combo of keyboards in play. Kazuko Sakata（さかたかずこ）took care of the lyrics.