I've been a fan of Japanese popular music for 40 years, and have managed to collect a lot of material during that time. So I decided I wanted to talk about Showa Era music with like-minded fans. My particular era is the 70s and 80s (thus the "kayo kyoku"). The plus part includes a number of songs and artists from the last 30 years and also the early kayo. So, let's talk about New Music, aidoru, City Pop and enka.
Credits
I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.
A few years ago, I posted the late Yutaka Ishio's（石尾豊）B-side to his 1986 single "Non-Stop Freeway", "Onna ni Juku shite Kaettekina"（オンナに熟して帰ってきな）, with its snazzy brand of City Pop night life.
Well, compared to the heavy smoke-filled atmosphere of clinking glasses of Old Parr and nightclub hostesses from "Onna ni Juku shite Kaettekina", Ishio's"Non-Stop Freeway" is a much more refreshing ride in the convertible. Nope, I don't think the A-side is really City Pop...more a mix of pop and rock; however, that underlying synth rhythm does remind me of some of the music that I was hearing on Canadian radio back in those mid-1980s. Lyricist Konosuke Fuji（藤公之介）and composer Kingo Hamada（浜田金吾）, who took care of the B-side, were also responsible for the A-side which is really quite the breezy drive away from Roppongi and Shinjuku.
It was exactly a year ago (and also today happens to be the current Emperor's birthday in Japan so it was a national holiday over there) that I posted up "Dance-y Songs for Me (for International Dance Day)". I don't consider myself anything of even being a mediocre dancer but I always enjoy seeing the experts trot their stuff especially when it comes to music I've come to known and love. And yes, International Dance Day is on April 29th but as I mentioned in the original article a year ago, I can't wait until the 29th. I wanna boogie now! So, without further ado:
This was one of commenter Brian Mitchell's suggestions when he spoke on the original dance article, and I see that the dance-oriented video games have agreed as well. Seeing how kayo kyoku has been getting its props around the world, I can also imagine that folks can be strutting their stuff to Pink Lady's classic in the clubs as well as the karaoke boxes.
Hey, the Village People brought it to the disco-crazed masses but Hideki Saijo（西城秀樹）also made it his own as a beloved piece of his discography. The danceability is already built in, and as with "UFO" above, I'm sure that both the karaoke boxes and dance clubs felt the love for "Young Man". Certainly, Saijo may be looking at us with a smile.
I don't usually consider the music of Hosono（細野晴臣）, Takahashi（高橋幸宏）and Sakamoto（坂本龍一）something to hit the disco floors for (despite YMO marking itself "the No. 1 dance band in Japan"), but "Tighten Up" can be one exception since as with "Young Man" above, this was a Japanese cover of a song by an American band that liked to get the folks up and moving. I still want that YMO shirt!
I'm surprised that I hadn't included this one in the original article but I guess Labels was pretty stuffed to the gills with entries, so I'm glad that I get to put it the second list. After all. Kingo Hamada's（濱田金吾）classic is a City Pop party favour for big city living. Plus, YouTuber hirokoboogie shows how folks can move to the groove if you refer back to the "midnight cruisin'" article.
This was another one of Brian's recommendations. Having listened to "Say Goodbye" in the years since I posted up the article for the song and got my copy of the 1982 album "Awakenings", I'm wondering if the late great Hiroshi Sato（佐藤博）had been channeling his inner Stevie Wonder or Herbie Hancock when he came up with this masterpiece. Shimmy those shoulders away.
Speaking of hirokoboogie, here she is with her friends as they cut up a rug doing Anri's（杏里）"Goodbye Boogie Dance". Not sure if there had been a lot of lockin' when the song first came out in 1983, but I'm sure folks at home were shimmying up a storm. I can't even imagine how the new fans were reacting on the dance floor at the City Pop dance parties several years ago to this one.
PSY-S was another technopop band that burst onto the scene with some great hooks...hooks that could potentially grab onto listeners and force them to boogie, shimmy or however folks tend to move. The two versions of "Woman-S" had their own ways of manipulating people into doing their steps; the original (below), for example, had that booming percussion.
I've got a feeling that "Dance-y songs for Me 3" will be coming out in 2027!
Well, this brings back some sentimental memories. The bunch of us often went to this combination of Hard Rock Cafe and Tony Roma's at the end of an alley off the main street of Roppongi in Tokyo. There was really no worry about the alley being dark; the neon firing away off the building housing the two restaurants was more than enough to light the way.
Back in 2024, I posted an article featuring singer-songwriter Kingo Hamada's（濱田金吾）fourth single from November 1981, "N.Y. City Marathon". If I ever do an Author's Picks based on New York City, this is one song that I will definitely feature. However, tonight's article and the last article for tonight is the B-side"Sentimental Moment". A happy-go-lucky song that contains some City Pop verses and an AOR chorus, this was created by Hamada with Kazuko Kobayashi's（小林和子）lyrics.
Speaking about those lyrics, it seems to deal with a guy surprised (and probably secretly delighted) that a woman from his past that he's never quite gotten over has darkened his doorstep once more. A second chance and a sentimental moment. Judging from the very upbeat chorus, I imagine that the reunion has been successful and they're both bounding down the highway in a cherry-red convertible.
(Admittedly, what's written below may be old news to her fans so please bear with me here.)
In the years that we've been writing on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", we've realized that a few singers got their fifteen minutes of fame only to disappear completely from view. Takako Mamiya（間宮貴子）and Meiko Nakahara（中原めいこ）are two notable examples. Maybe another one was Reiko Takahashi（高橋玲子）who a lot of fans know for her super cheerful City Pop"Sunset Road". She released her two singles in the late 1980s and that was all she wrote seemingly.
Well, commenter Robert B. contacted me last week and informed me that he had found this new Reiko Takahashi YouTube channel established by the singer herself on January 27th last week, which includes a video containing a brief statement of gratitude from her for her fans' support back in the 1980s and currently. The number of comments for it has made a steady line upwards.
Then a few days later, the YouTube channel Kimi no Station: The Home of City Pop posted an English-language version of Takahashi's "Sunset Road" with the added subtitle of "Let me into your place". According to the blurb under the video, this version was only available on the tape cassette form of the July 1st 1987 single.
Also through the blurb, I discovered that Takahashi under the new name of Rayko was a part of an all-Japanese house band that played on Season 5 of "The Eric Andre Show" back in 2020. You can see her at the upper right of the screen at the 8-second mark. Plus, you can check out her Instagram account. Thanks to Robert B. for the tip.
In all likelihood, this track from Kingo Hamada's（濱田金吾）6th album"Heart Cocktail" from March 1985, "Tokyo Come & Gone" reflects the sad and concise four frames of a manga that makes up the cover of the album. My condolences to the former Itos.
"Tokyo Come & Gone" was written by Keisuke Yamakawa（山川啓介）and composed by Hamada as a wistful and reflective ballad of what used to be a happy relationship and is now a very former one. Not sure what happened but hey, that's life and romance in the big city, I guess. It's a beautiful and melancholy City Pop melody by Hamada with the Fender Rhodes and one other keyboard gently making contact. There's very much of a "there are other fish in the sea" feeling in this one as it accompanies Mr. Ito heading sadly into the horizon.
Yesterday's main topic on NHK's morning variety information show "Asaichi"（あさイチ）just happened to be on the how-to-do's and etiquette surrounding a visit to the popular all-you-can-eat buffets in the country. During that computer part purchasing frenzy yesterday, my friend and I had found a Japanese eatery called The Ohiru Café and we stuffed our pie holes full of tonkatsu sandwiches so I was pretty immune to all that "viking" on television last night. Still, back in the day, when my gastrointestinal tract was ravenous and more pliable to all that food, I had my time in the buffet circuit including the weekly cake buffets at the Hilton Hotel in Shinjuku. Not so much though that I had my face on warning signs for the staff.
I thought therefore that a song with the title of "Hirusagari no Selection" (Afternoon Selection) would be ideal for such a preamble ramble. It feels like two words optimal as a description for cake, tea or other gastronomic choices at a restaurant during the weekdays.
However, I'm not sure whether lyricist Kazuko Kobayashi（小林和子）or composer Kingo Hamada（浜田金吾）had ever meant for this particular song to be emblematic of such foodie pursuits. A track from the latter's 6th album"Heart Cocktail" from March 1985, it's a song that doesn't actually fall under his more common genres of City Pop and jazz. It's really a fancy-free and breezy pop tune that hints at music from way before even the 1980s. Both people were also responsible for "Yokaze no Information"（夜風のインフォメーション）, a fellow track mate on the album.
Hope you're having a good start to the weekend. It's relatively cool today although Toronto will be getting a little more residual summer heat next week, before things finally chill down for autumn. Sun worshippers won't be too happy but let's try to enjoy what's left of the summer before the end.
I've noticed that over the past several days or so, a fair number of songs that originated in 1988 have been getting posted on the blog. Nothing intentional about that. It's just that is how these songs have come out from the backlog and not from any crazed desire to show off the kayo from Showa 63.
Anyways, back in early August, I introduced singer Akiko Nakazato（中里あき子）to the blog with her "Do You Wanna Dance?" from 1989. Well, here is a track from her earlier October 1988 2nd album"Mr" (pronounced "Meru"...initially thought that handwritten title on the album cover looked like a couple of wayward worms) titled "Aoi Mona Liza" (Blue Mona Lisa). Just from listening to "Do You Wanna Dance?" and then "Aoi Mona Liza", Nakazato did enjoy singing those thumpy R&B tunes. Maybe she was into some of that New Jack Swing or dance club songs. Ayuko Ishikawa（石川あゆ子）took care of the lyrics while Ritsuko of the sister duo Milk was the composer. City Pop stalwart Kingo Hamada（濱田金吾）produced "Mr" and Nakazato's remaining three albums.
It's quite the amazing statistic, even among all of the other Japanese music veterans, but as of next year, Mariko Takahashi（高橋真梨子）will be celebrating her 60th anniversary as a singer and songwriter. Here's hoping that she's staying active and healthy.
Although my memory gets a bit wobbly occasionally, I don't believe that I have covered Takahashi's October 1981 5th album"Lovendow", so in all likelihood, I have yet to make any postings about Track 4 on the album, "Wine no You na Kiss" (Kisses Like Wine). One would think that with a title like that, the song would be more of a love ballad.
However, "Wine no You na Kiss" is actually quite the spritely samba-infused tune, a genre that Takahashi has had an affinity for. Written by Chinfa Kan（康珍化）and composed by Kingo Hamada（浜田金吾）, it starts out like a disco tune then runs into the dramatic city beat before going all major-key upbeat over that samba rhythm with a vengeance. Those horns, especially that trumpeter, love their Maynard Ferguson apparently and that's OK since the song probably describes what a typical Friday or Saturday night in Tokyo must have been like back in the high-flying 1980s.
Back in November 2019, I posted an article from Mariya Takeuchi's（竹内まりや）March 1980 album "Love Songs" regarding one of its tracks, "Lonely Wind", which has been noted in one of the comments underneath its YouTube video as sounding like an unrevealed "Grease" track. I can't deny that...it does have that 1950s or early 1960s romantic doo-wop feeling.
What I didn't know at the time was that Takeuchi's "Lonely Wind" which had been composed by Kingo Hamada（濱田金吾）and written by Kazuko Kobayashi（小林和子）was actually a cover of Hamada's original version. Mind you, it was only by a few months since his debut album of "Manhattan in the Rain" had come out in January 1980. It was also added as the B-side to the singer-songwriter's 2nd single"Hotel Surf-Rider" in June of that year.
Although Hamada's original "Lonely Wind" also retains that old-fashioned mid-20th-century flavour that would have Richie and Lori Beth swooning on the porch on that cool summer night (and was also a trope of Mariya's music back in the early days), his version seems to also possess some jazz and blues with an intro that's reminiscent of a Carpenters song. Overall, and this isn't to put down Mariya's cover (and how I could ever do that?), the original sounds a bit more mature and refined, for the lack of a better word.
As I mentioned in my very first article featuring Hitomi Ishikawa（石川ひとみ）, she was one of the first Japanese pop singers or aidoru that led me into the wonderful world of kayo kyoku during and following my trip to Japan in 1981. The reason for this was her huge hit "Machibuse"（まちぶせ）which was reaching all of the radios, record stores and music programs that year.
Well, as I always say, let's not forget those B-sides. Yes, incredibly enough, "Machibuse" still had a B-side and though it probably didn't have much reach beyond the big Ishikawa fans, it's still a pretty nice number. "Natsukashiki Refrain" (Nostalgic Refrain) isn't the pure pop of "Machibuse" as created by Yumi Arai（荒井由実）years previously. It's more along the lines of the 50s or 60s style of girl pop that was also pretty popular at that time. Written by Michio Yamagami（山上路夫）and composed by Kingo Hamada（浜田金吾）, the story is of a young lady reminiscing of a past romance after she sees the decrepit remains of a poster from a concert that she and her now ex-beau had attended a long time ago.
The lyrics by Yamagami are definitely nostalgic but now that we're looking more than forty years back, Hamada's music has also added to the sepia-toned nostalgia. Kinda wonder how Ishikawa herself is thinking about her time as one of the most popular singers back in 1981.
Happy Friday! I've mentioned this before whenever we get into the City Pop frame of mind on this day of the week, but it seems as if a lot of folk singers of the 1970s eventually found their inner city groove and jumped over to the J-urban contemporary going into the 1980s.
I found another singer making that jump. Yutaka Ishio（石尾豊）was once known as Danny Ishio of the late 60s-early 70s folk group Four Saints（フォー・セインツ）but sometime after it broke up in 1973, he got into a solo career. One single that he released well into the 1980s was the 1986 "Nonstop Freeway". For today's article, I have the B-side known as "Onna ni Juku shite Kaettekina"(Come Back When You're Mature Enough to be a Woman).
Aggressive title and judging from the Kingo Hamada（浜田金吾）melody (Hamada is another folk-turned-City Pop convert) and Motoki Funayama（船山基紀）arrangement, the setting must be in the champagne-and-caviar region of swinging Bubble Era Tokyo. I can even imagine the tinkling (or smashing) of champagne glasses as the keyboard is tripping the light fantastic. Konosuke Fuji（藤公之介）was responsible for the lyrics which are given clearly though not particularly expressively.
As for Ishio, he later became the stadium DJ for the home games of the soccer J-League Kashima Antlers for twenty years between 1993 and 2013. He unfortunately passed away in April 2014 from liver cancer.
Hello and welcome once more to the AI Gallery where we throw in various titles into the Bing AI art generator and see what we get. For this edition, we're back with City Pop songs.
Well, if you're looking for a City Pop song that has anything to do with one of New York City's biggest sporting events, this is your lucky day! Personally, the last time I was in anything like a marathon was more than forty years ago when I attempted the half-marathon at the Toronto Zoo in 1982, several months after this single had been released, and I ended up taking one of the longest baths that I've ever had hours later.
But enough about misery. "N.Y. City Marathon" was Kingo Hamada's（濱田金吾）4th single from November 1981 and it was written by Chinfa Kan（康珍化）while Hamada himself composed the tune. Those first several seconds had me wondering if I was going to get some Rolling Stones raunch but then also hearing that Fender Rhodes and Hamada's creamy vocals reassured me that City Pop's arrival was as inevitable as that winning runner across the finish line. And while he sings about life in the Big Apple, we get that Billy Joel piano chugging followed by a sweeping and romantic pre-chorus and then a grand trumpet solo. Just like a trip through Manhattan, a little bit of everything comes flying our way in this song.
"N.Y. City Marathon" is also the first track on Hamada's 3rd album"Feel the Night" from November 1981 as well, and so it shares track space with the jazz torch ballad "Jazz Singer" and the cool and sinewy Steely Dan-esque"Run Thru The Night".
Kenji Haga（羽賀研二）is a long-standing tarento on Japanese television whom I've seen go through all sorts of trials and tribulations, and certainly a lot of his media exposure was due to his romantic relationship with fellow tarento and model Anna Umemiya（梅宮アンナ）beginning from the 1990s. What I hadn't known until I was well into doing the blog was that he basically got his start as one-third of the Ii Tomo Seinen Tai（いいとも青年隊...The Ii Tomo Youth Brigade） , the first group of song-and-dance men to perform on Fuji-TV's long-running noon time variety show "Morita Kazuyoshi Hour - Waratte Ii Tomo"（森田一義アワー・笑っていいとも....The Kazuyoshi Morita Hour: It's OK To Laugh) . Apparently back then, he used to put on the glasses to show off that intellectual beefcake look.
Eventually with his rising profile in the geinokai in the 1980s, one of his powers-that-be probably gave the order "OK, Kenji, you gotta cut a record!" as usually was the case with any entertainer. And indeed, Haga released a number of singles between 1982 and 2004 but with only two albums in 1984 and 1985. The first album was "Kouha Bigaku"（硬派美学...Hardline Aesthestics） and the glasses-less Haga looked all of fourteen years old (he was well into his twenties) on the cover. Maybe it was a Hiromi Go（郷ひろみ）syndrome or something.
Anyways, one of the tracks on "Kouha Bigaku" is "City Alone" (and the above version seems to have been truncated). Haga appears to have taken on that bespectacled dandy-esque character from the top video when he recorded this one. His vocals sound a bit like crooning Yosui Inoue（井上陽水）while the City Pop melody by Kingo Hamada（浜田金吾）provides the atmosphere of the big, bad and lonely if fascinating metropolis. Yumi Yoshimoto（吉本由美）was the lyricist here.
Twitter friend and Hideki Saijo（西城秀樹）fan Silas sent out the reminder earlier that April 13th tomorrow would have been the late great singer's 69th birthday. As such, I'm happy to say that I've had one of his songs on the backlog list ready to go for a while, and it's perfect for Urban Contemporary Friday on "Kayo Kyoku Plus".
And this song certainly sounds urbane and contemporary. "Club Manhattan" is the first track on Saijo's April 1988 album "San-juu-san Sai"（33才...33 Years Old） whose title track is based on Julio Iglesias' own "33 Años" according to the J-Wiki article on the album.
I'm sure that somewhere in Tokyo's drinking establishment history, there was or is a Club Manhattan somewhere in Roppongi or Shinjuku, and according to what I hear from Hideki, it's one cool and swanky pad high up in the skyscraper. Written by Shinnosuke Uesugi（上杉伸之助）, composed by Kingo Hamada（浜田金吾）and arranged by Makoto Matsushita（松下誠）, the smooth funky strut deserves its own wardrobe of silky suit and hat as it slinks its way to the titular club itself. It's a great collaboration between Hamada who's brought some of that jazz (and possibly the background chorus) as well to Matsushita's funk.
In a way, listening to "Club Manhattan" has brought me some comparisons between the 1988 Saijo and his teenage self from the early 1970s. Whereas teen Hideki was all about the rock-fueled punch-now-ask-questions-later approach to situations, the regular club member Saijo is suave, sophisticated and less prone to throw the fists around. He's in complete control now. He may even own Club Manhattan.
Finally got out of my lunch-induced drowsiness state after watching (or trying to watch) two periods of the Pittsburgh Penguins-Tampa Bay Lightning afternoon game so that I can put up a couple of articles for KKP Saturday. Of course, the first one I'm tackling is going to be one that may put me back to sleep.
This is not to say that turn-of-the-decade aidoruYuri Kurizane's（国実百合）song "Soba ni Ite Kudasai"(Please Stay With Me) is a bad one, but the arrangement is such that it pretty much resembles a Xmas lullaby with what sounds like a toy piano or music box in the background. It is one of four songs on Kurizane's 8th single from February 1990, "Kitakaze to Taiyou"（北風と太陽...The North Wind and the Sun）, and this one was written by former aidoru Kumiko Aimoto（相本久美子）and composed by Kingo Hamada（浜田金吾）. What's winning for it is the slightly doo-wop nature of "Soba ni Ite Kudasai" thanks to that background chorus but it is a late 80s/early 90s aidoru tune with those synths powering away there.
If you wish, you can try one of her more orange-juice-sparking songs "Midori no Express"（緑のエクスプレス）from 1989.
Yesterday, I posted Part 1 covering chanteuse Mariko Takahashi's（高橋真梨子）March 1979 debut album"Hitoaruki"(Walking Alone) and so I'm completing it with Part 2 tonight. It's been a nice trip through the genres as the Hiroshima Prefecture-born singer exercises her wonderful chops for the first time as a solo singer.
Seeing that there were a total of ten tracks on the original LP, I'm assuming that Track 6"Oide Summer Holiday"（おいでサマー・ホリディ）which I have already covered in its own separate article (you can click the link in Part 1) starts off Side B. So we go onto Track 7, "Otozure"（訪れ...The Visit） which is a short but very sweet and slightly woozy and boozy bossa nova-inflected song about a visit by a lover which, let's say, is a bit bigger than a pleasant arrival for tea and cake (maybe for breakfast, perhaps😎). Yasuhiro Kido（木戸やすひろ）was responsible for the melody while the lyricist could be a man or a woman named Aki Fukunaga or Kumi Fukunaga（福永史）. According to Jisho.org, the kanji for that first name could be read in different ways.
The next track is "Futari no Monogatari"（二人の物語...Story of Two）, a bittersweet tale of a woman walking alone in the rain, being reminded when it used to be the two of them taking their walks before fate intervened and they split up. Takahashi has also been one of those few singers in Japanese pop music that also reveled in doing the occasional song with that country ballad lilt, and this is one of them. It doesn't always stay maudlin though as the arrangement by Shinichi Tanabe（田辺信一）takes things into something brighter and hopeful in the chorus. "Futari no Monogatari" was written and composed by Kuni Kawauchi（クニ河内）who had created "My Dream" from Part 1.
Takahashi has always had a deep and rich voice and she goes slightly even deeper here as she tackles Track 9, the melancholy "Yoru no Kao"（夜の顔...Face of the Night）. Written by Rei Tsushima（津島玲）and composed by Kiyoshi Hasegawa（長谷川きよし）, the song about what I think is a lady in the mizu shobai industry going about her evening business with a sense of resignation and necessity comes off in the arrangement as being dramatic to the point of being almost chanson. That intro also had me wondering whether this was going to be a Fashion Music tune but the arrangement veers things back into adult contemporary and perhaps a bit of classical pop.
From the heaviness of the previous song, we come to the final track for "Hitoaruki", "Chiisana Watashi"（小さなわたし...Little Me）. It's a love ballad composed by City Pop and jazz songsmith Kingo Hamada（濱田金吾）, and I've found the collaborations between Takahashi and Hamada to be some wonderfully tenderhearted songs such as the one they would do later, "Jazz Singer". Both Takahashi and the aforementioned Fukunaga for "Otozure" worked on the lyrics about a woman who feels warm, safe and beloved in her partner's embrace. The ballad also feels like a lullaby of sorts and I recall that at least a few of Takahashi's other albums ended in the same manner as if she knew that fans would listen to them later into the wee hours of the night so that the final track would help to send them off to la-la land.
In any case, "Hitoaruki" is an album that Takahashi fans probably already have as a must-own, but for those who are starting their exploration into the Japanese pop music of yore that doesn't involve aidoru or enka, I can recommend this one as an album for those who could enjoy the adult contemporary with the foray into the romantic.
As a PS, I have to say that it was listening to "Chiisana Watashi" that prompted me to talk about the entire album. I had originally planned to just write about that final track from 1979 and then also introduce Takahashi's own cover of the ballad in her most recent album of covers, "Mari Covers" from June 2019. The newer version has been fortified with some bossa nova.
Some years ago, I wrote an article on Yoko Katori's（鹿取洋子）debut single"Goin' Back to China" which was a cover of Dutch pop/rock band Diesel's song. Both songs got their release in 1979.
The B-side of Katori's single was "Heartache Tonight", a homegrown tune which doesn't have quite as much bounce as "Goin' Back to China" but it's still a pretty nice 70s City Pop tune with some of that disco flair. I guess it must be Kingo Hamada Day（濱田金吾）on KKP since he's already been mentioned on the previous two articles today including "Ink Blue no Yoake"（Ink Blueの夜明け）; he's responsible for the melody while Kazuko Kobayashi（小林和子）has taken care of the lyrics. Akira Inoue（井上鑑）arranged the entire song.
I've already mentioned singer-songwriter Kingo Hamada（濱田金吾）in my previous article on midnight-themed City Pop songs, but I just had to mention him one more time today on Urban Contemporary Fridays on KKP. But if you can allow me one brief aside: who da thunk it? Hamada went from being a member of a 1970s folk groupCraft to becoming a crooner of jazz ballads and a funkster in City Pop.
We may have a hybrid of sorts between that jazz and City Pop with his splendid "Ink Blue no Yoake"(Ink Blue Sunrise) which is a track on his August 1983 5th album"Mugshot". I realize the title makes dawn the temporal setting but I think that "Ink Blue no Yoake" can be perfect for anything in the wee hours, even midnight. Still I kinda imagine a couple walking woozily after a crazy night out back to the car or apartment with the lady just carrying her heels as this song is playing and the sun is just rising out of the horizon. Written by Takako Ozawa（大沢孝子）and composed by Hamada, it's indeed a classy type of Japanese metropolitan music that has me thinking of Tohoku Shinkansen's take on "September Valentine" or, for that matter, any sort of sophisticated pop ballad.
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