Well, They Finally Did It!

 

I'm starting the KKP articles for the final day of April 2023 from a different angle due to a significant event in our city last night. I've often spoken about my hometown of Toronto in the blog and a lot of it admittedly has been about the weather because I believe that the largest city in Canada has had some very wacky meteorological phenomena to make weathercasters around the world swoon. However, sports is not a big thing with me usually and in this city, hockey is all. It's kinda like the love that Osakans have for their baseball Hanshin Tigers. No matter how often the Tigers lose, the folks there will always have their backs. And for the fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs, it's been a long winter of discontent with many years of not making the playoffs and then after finally getting some elite talent on the team several years ago, they inconceivably couldn't get past the first round of the playoffs. Decades ago, when the hockey team was in another losing funk, there was the expression "Toronto is the only place on Earth where the Leafs fall in spring". Ouch!

Well, some of the monkey finally came off all of our backs last night. For the time since the spring of 2004, the Leafs finally won a playoff round in dramatic fashion. They won it in a low-scoring affair in overtime. There was supposed to have been a planned power outage in a huge area of the province of Ontario last night but the electric company promised that if there were overtime, it would hold off on the outage. I'm sure that it kept the promise. It's the Leafs, after all.

Players, coaches, and fans went berserk. It felt as if the Leafs won the Stanley Cup championship instead of just a mere opening round. But then again, a man who had been dying of thirst getting those precious gulps of water would taste them as some of the sweetest wine ever produced. For the journalistic angle in the past several hours, the reporters have been openly wondering what was happening out in the world when the Leafs had won their previous playoff round nineteen years ago.

Facebook was launched in February.

"Kill Bill, Vol. 2" was No. 1 at the box office during the week of April 18th 2004. And as for the Japanese music scene, I have a few things to add.

Hinano Kamimura（上村ひなの）of Hinatazaka 46（日向坂46）was born on April 12th that year.

The aidoru group Berryz Kobo（Berryz工房）would make its debut in January 2004 although the above is one of their later singles, "cha cha SING".

J-Pop crooner Ken Hirai（平井堅）released his April 28th 2004 single "Hitomi wo Tojite"（瞳をとじて）which would eventually become the No. 1 single of the year.

In any case, many congratulations to the team and their fans. I can only hope that I will be inspired to write about what happened in the spring of 1967 in several weeks' time since it was 56 years ago that the Leafs had last won the Stanley Cup. Maybe I had learned how to walk by then.

Berryz Kobo -- cha cha SING

Thai cuisine has become my favorite foreign cuisine for some years now. Therefore, after my Saturday morning nihongo class, I was more than happy to finally visit the third Thai restaurant I found in Rio de Janeiro.

Even though it was my sixth time eating Thai food (I went twice to one restaurant and three times to other), I was not entirely familiar with everything they use to include on the menu, so I tried a little bit of everything they had, including things I usually don’t eat (fresh vegetables, to be more specific). In the end, I enjoyed pretty much everything (even the fresh vegetables spring rolls and fish dumplings), but it was the jasmine rice with coconut milk and red curry paste, which was already a favorite of mine since the visits I did to the other restaurants in the past, that saw me repeating countless times. It was just amazing!

After eating a lot, I just started thinking about Thai music, and how little I know about it, while on the bus returning home. At the end, the closest thing I had on my cell phone was “cha cha SING”, a Berryz Kobo’s (Berryz工房) cover of a Thai song, which they released as a single in July 2012.

“cha cha SING” is a fun song in that comical/parody style Morning Musume (モーニング娘。) liked to do around 2000, wich exotic sounding songs like “Koi no Dance Site” (恋のダンスサイト) and “Happy Summer Wedding” (ハッピーサマーウェディング), for example. The arrangement is top-notch with all the synths and traditional sounds, and even though it may sound a little stereotyped at times, Berryz did a very good job covering it (catchiness level is pretty high as well). Speaking of cover, the original by Bird Thongchai can be heard below.

“cha cha SING” reached #6 on the Oricon charts, selling 33,001 copies. Lyrics were written by Mukek Jongmankhong, while Japanese lyrics were written by Tsunku (つんく). Sudsan Wongsamut was the responsible for music, and, finally, Kaoru Okubo (大久保薫) did the arrangement.

Source: generasia.com

Berryz Kobo -- Dschinghis Khan (ジンギスカン)

A couple of hours ago my father showed me an old video and, knowing that I like 70s disco, asked if I knew the band. As I could see after the first second, It was a video of German band Dschinghis Khan performing their hit song, which is also called “Dschinghis Khan”. I answered to my father that I actually knew the band, and that the song has also been covered by a Japanese act, which is Hello! Project’s Berryz Kobo (Berryz工房). According to my father, this song was ridiculously popular in Brazil. Maybe it was a hit in Japan as well (I remember that in my favourite SMAP concert, from 1999, Johnny’s eternal boy band performed “Dschinghis Khan” live and the audience got really pumped up).

Released in March 2008, Berryz’s version of “Dschinghis Khan” is, in my opinion, as bizarre as the original. Although I’m not a big fan of the song, I acknowledge it’s catchy in any language (a Brazilian version also exists). But Berryz didn’t just record a new, high-pitched version of the song, but also released a remixed single, in September of the same year, that mixes the German band’s original vocals with their own vocals in a crazy Eurobeat/Techno arrangement. It’s called “Dshinghis Khan -Tartar Mix-” (ジンギスカン タルタルミックス), and that’s the version posted at the beginning of the post. What else could we expect from Tsunku (つんく), heh?

Talking about Tsunku, he seems to be a fan of this song, because Morning Musume’s (モーニング娘。) “Koi no Dance Site” (恋のダンスサイト) song is heavily inspired by “Dschinghis Khan”. The obvious inspiration is the catchy “Uh! Ha! Uh! Ha!” chants, but he also used a similar melody in the verses as well. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear the similarities. Apparently, Tsunku deepened the key of “Dschinghis Khan” for “Koi no Dance Site”. Well, I don’t really understand technical aspects, but he surely took too much inspiration from “Dschinghis Khan”.

Berryz Kobo’s “Dschinghis Khan”single reached #5 on the Oricon charts, selling 37,096 copies. Japanese lyrics were written by Iori Yamamoto (山本伊織), while music was composed by Ralph Siegel. As for the arrangement, DANCE☆MAN (ダンス☆マン) was the responsible.

Source: play-asia.com