eufonius -- Kokoro ni Tsubomi（ココロニツボミ）

As we approach the end of another year, I've been able to catch the usual 4 seasons' worth of anime. Personally speaking, I haven't been as enamored with the stuff in the autumn season. Not as crazy about "Just Because" since I'm simply not a fan of straight drama and "Two-Car" just seems to have screaming matches and tension for the sake of having them.

However, one show that I have gradually come to enjoy is "Konohana Kitan"（このはな綺譚）. The remarkable thing about it is how much, at least on the surface, it resembles an anime that we saw all the way at the beginning of the year, "Urara Meirochou"（うらら迷路帖）. Both shows have magic and mysticism infused into the setting but I think "Konohana Kitan" has some more gravitas and perhaps some harder knocks although it often shows a sense of humour among the characters.

I also like the opening theme by the band eufonius "Kokoro ni Tsubomi" (Buds on the Heart) which begins with a piano resembling a babbling brook before having lyricist and vocalist riya sing the song reminiscent of some of the ballads that I used to hear around the early 2000s from chanteuses like Misia. The melody was provided by keyboardist Hajime Kikuchi（菊地創）. There may be some melancholy in the some of the episodes but I think there is a certain reassurance within "Kokoro ni Tsubomi" that things will always be looking up at the end.

Plasmagica -- Ryuusei Dreamline

Met up with my anime buddy for the first time in quite a while. He was quite happy with the souvenirs. To be honest, though, I haven't been as enthused about this current group of anime that he has shown me with the exception of the continuing hilarity of "Mahojin Guruguru"（魔法陣グルグル）and the fascinating "Konohana Kitan"（このはな綺譚）.

However, during the anison hour segment of my day, I got to hear an old song from the initial season of "Show By Rock!!". "Ryuusei Dreamline" (Comet Dreamline) was a tune by Plasmagica（プラズマジカ）that I heard now and then. My buddy reminded me that it was the song that got Cyan and the band to the top.

"Ryuusei Dreamline" was written and composed by the musical group RegaSound and I'm sure the song is placed on one of the many CDs that the show has spawned since that first season in 2015. Not sure if there will be a third season since the end of the second season was underwhelming but I know that some franchises have a sophomore jinx so perhaps another "Show By Rock!!" can be brought back. If so, a ton of more soundtrack-and-song CDs are on the way.

Norihiko Hashida and Climax -- Futari dake no Tabi（ふたりだけの旅）

Another kayo singer-songwriter left this mortal coil earlier today. Norihiko Hashida（はしだのりひこ）who participated in a number of bands, notably The Folk Crusaders（ザ・フォーク・クルセダーズ）and Norihiko Hashida and Climax（はしだのりひことクライマックス）, passed away at the age of 72 due to Parkinson's Disease.

I wanted to do a small tribute to him so I did a search on his J-Wiki page. His band Norihiko Hashida and Climax had that huge hit from their debut single "Hanayome"（花嫁）when it was first released in January 1971. But then I found their second single which came out later in June of that year, "Futari dake no Tabi" (A Trip Just For Two).

Written by Osamu Kitayama（北山修）, Hashida's old bandmate from The Folk Crusaders and composed by Hashida, "Futari dake no Tabi" keeps the cheeriness of "Hanayome" but also brings in a bit more of a seeming urgency that rather makes the song sound less like a folk song and more like something from the Old West. The theme of marriage continues with this song from their debut hit, though, as a young couple puts up roots and then heads off on a trip somewhere...perhaps the honeymoon.

There's no mention about how it did on the Oricon weeklies but according to the folks at entamedata, the song was the 71st-ranked single for 1971.

Omurice

Well, Dan and I got our nighttime Gundam fix out of the way. We figured that we could stick around Odaiba and walk some of that hefty tonkatsu lunch off from earlier in the day. So we did so. However, one fly in my ointment was that my right knee was giving me conniptions. I rather felt like a veteran baseball player getting injured two-thirds of the way through the season. Therefore, I cried "Uncle!" and we both decided to take a break for at least 30 minutes right beside a vending machine in the VenusFort complex.

While I was recuperating and talking about old times with Danny, I put in the coins to get this intriguing substance called Premium Morning Tea which is supposed to taste like Iced Milk Tea, a popular drink (I certainly was a huge fan back in my Tokyo days) in Japan. This particular version was completely clear. Memories of Clear Coke and Clear Pepsi were brought back to the surface. Mind you, the concept of invisible milk tea should have terrified me but at the time, I was exhausted and my knee was killing me. Furthermore, if I'd had my eyes closed and drank the stuff, I wouldn't have guessed that it was clear. It truly did taste like my beloved Iced Milk Tea....perhaps that observation should be terrifying YOU.

In any case, this article for Tokyo 2017 isn't about Clear Premium Morning Tea. For one thing, I doubted very much that I would be able to find an appropriate song to link it with.

After that rest, I was able to walk more normally without limping too badly and then we decided to get something relatively light for dinner. Unfortunately, we couldn't find anything on that level in Odaiba...apparently, folks in the Tokyo Bay area like their dinners heavy. However, we weren't going to give up and so we decided to hit the shopping mall Aqua City and after some looking, we rested again in a place called Pomme's. As you can see in the display above, you can figure out that the restaurant specializes in omurice (rice omelette).

Not sure how it's been received in other parts of the world outside of Japan, but omurice is still relatively unknown in Toronto at least, despite the fact that we've just gone through a major ramen-and-izakaya boom here. Perhaps its time is still in the offing but also maybe the majority of folks in my burg may not cotton too fondly for ketchup fried rice under a blanket of runny omelette.

In any case, I went for the Chicken Nanban version as you can see at the very top and just above. In retrospect, I'm quite surprised that I was able to finish it off at all but maybe having the bum knee gave me that impetus to nourish my body and soul.

Plus, having a glass of mango milk didn't hurt, either. My only question was why anyone would put lemon slices on an omelette.

Well, here's the song of the article, Chisato Moritaka's（森高千里）"Rockin' Omelette"（ロックン・オムレツ）.

Naoko Ken -- Kishuu（帰愁）

One of the songs from Yumi Matsutoya's（松任谷由実）"OLIVE" that I couldn't include in my article for the album yesterday was "Kishuu" since I couldn't find it in its entirety on YouTube. However, there is a brief excerpt of it on the Amazon page below.

https://www.amazon.co.jp/OLIVE-%E6%9D%BE%E4%BB%BB%E8%B0%B7%E7%94%B1%E5%AE%9F/dp/B00005GME9

The arrangement for the original song kept reminding me of "El Condor Pasa" because of those pan flutes. "Kishuu" was actually Yuming's 13th single from June 1979 and it only did very modestly on Oricon, getting as high as No. 89...not too high compared to how "OLIVE" did.

To be honest, I may actually enjoy the cover version performed by Naoko Ken（研ナオコ）since it has more of a contemporary City Pop sheen to it. She first released the song as her 37th single in November 1985 and it was also a track on her 14th album "Deep" which came out on the same day as the single.

As for "Kishuu", apparently the kanji compound may not exactly exist...at least, not as a regular word per se, since my online dictionaries didn't register it. However, the overall meaning comes across as "return to regret". And that is what the song is all about...a lady who meets an old flame but just can't come around to say how she truly feels about him and goes home filled with regret.

Hearing Ken's voice, it has always had that smoky and cracking quality to it like burning embers or representing a woman who's seen it all and has become cynically world-weary. I would say on that point, she makes "Kishuu" work. That City Pop arrangement also sounds better here than the original's inclusion of pan flutes and mandolin.

Not sure how she (or her manager) did it, but less than 2 months after releasing "Kishuu", Ken found herself performing that very song on the 1985 Kohaku Utagassen. I'm not sure whether it even got onto the Oricon rankings.

Gundam Unicorn

Never was a huge "Gundam" fan. Don't know why that was...perhaps I just got too mecha'ed out with reruns of "Force Five" and "Robotech" in my teens. Still, I have a couple of friends who are fans and they wanted me to take photos of the new Gundam Unicorn behind Diver City in Odaiba. So, on the 7th, I hopped on the Yurikamome and took it down to Tokyo Bay to take a couple of shots of the new robot on the block during the daytime.

Treated myself to some Krispy Kreme since I did my friends a solid.

About a week later, when my friend Danny arrived from Osaka with his wife, all three of us had lunch in Akihabara before his wife had to head off to her hometown up north. Meanwhile, Dan and I decided to fulfill the other half of my mission which was to take some photos of Unicorn at night.

I gotta say that the night shots are a fair bit more dramatic.

Of course, since it was located near the top of Diver City, we also had to visit Gundam Base, the ultimate museum/shop for all things Gundam.

If you are a Gundam fan, feel free to salivate over the photos but really you owe it to yourself to visit Gundam Base someday.

Strangely enough, when I was thinking about a song to associate with all of these robots, none of the theme songs from the original anime or its descendants ever came to mind. Instead, it was Taeko Ohnuki's（大貫妙子）"Carnaval".

ZARD -- Yureru Omoi（揺れる想い）

Well, this news about the abdication of Emperor Akihito has gotten about as much time and pomp as the anticipated abdication itself, by my estimation. But yes, the bell has rung and the countdown has begun toward the end of the Heisei Era....April 30th 2019, to be exact.

That did get me thinking a bit today. When Emperor Akihito's father, Emperor Hirohito (the Showa Emperor) passed away in 1989, there were all sorts of remembrances about the Showa Era through many aspects. And this blog began almost 6 years ago initially as a platform to talk about Showa Era music. For me, music from 1925-1989 would arguably be best characterized by the advent of the Golden Age of Enka and Mood Kayo, but there were also three decades of aidoru-dom plus the smaller waves of New Music, City Pop and technopop.

It's all but guaranteed that there will be tons of news reports and documentaries on NHK and the commercial networks about the 30-odd years of Heisei for the next several months. And I'm sure that music will be part of the equation. So what was Heisei music like between 1989-2019?

Well, for me, I could probably talk best about the early Heisei period in the 1990s. There was the transition from kayo kyoku to J-Pop through the diversification of mainstream Japanese music, the emergence of the Komuro boom, the overall lack of female aidoru for most of that decade until Morning Musume came onto the scene in 1997, and then the rise of J-R&B among other things.

If someone asked me about a prime Heisei Era singer, I could say that ZARD would fit in there. She had that long string of hits through the 90s although her appearances on TV were few. The late Izumi Sakai（坂井泉水）struck me as being somewhat of a J-Pop Greta Garbo. Nonetheless, she was well heard if not seen.

"Yureru Omoi" (Wavering Thoughts) was one of her big hits as her 8th single. It was another summery song of optimism that first came out in May 1993 as ZARD sang about making that leap of faith to commit to that special someone. While Tetsuro Oda（織田哲郎）was behind the melody, ZARD took care of the lyrics.

The song was the first one in ZARD's career to enter Oricon at the No. 1 position which it held for 2 weeks and ended up as the 9th-ranked single for the year. It was her second hit following her earlier "Makenaide"（負けないで）. Her 4th album also ended up with the same title; it came out a couple of months after the single and also hit No. 1 for a total of 5 weeks, becoming the No. 1 album for the year.

Being the 1990s, "Yureru Omoi" just had to be attached to Pocari Sweat. Because of its Oricon success, the song also became the most successful contribution to the isotonic drink's campaign history.