Chasing A Song Along the Yamanote Line
So over at What Do You Do For An Encore, wdydfae posted a video of a song called ““Kawaberi no Ie” (“house next to a river”) by Nao Matsuzaki. I tried to give it a listen, but the video’s not available in my country. I let him know, and he replied with another version of the video. Which also wasn’t available here. Wdydfae had included links to both Nao’s site (where I was totally lost) and a site where one can purchase the song (shipping alone would cost 2 or 3 times as much as the actual CD, never mind that I was only wanting to hear one song). Since he had mentioned the song was used in some documentary, I asked the name of it, thinking I might find that on youtube. He posted a video of said documentary, this video finally working.
72 Hours – Dreams Along The Yamanote Line, song at about 22:50 –
After this most roundabout path of finding a way to hear it, I listened to the song, which was all right, quite mellow even. But then I went and watched the entire documentary.
It’s just under 25 minutes long, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. They start at Shibuya Station on the Yamanote Rail Line in Tokyo and walk their way around it, interviewing people they meet along the way. Give it a watch.
Posted on June 10, 2016, in ♫ ♪ ♫, Fun Stuff, Life and tagged fun stuff, life, love letter to japan, music. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
nightskyradio 
Thanks for the show tout, NSR!
“Documentary 72 Hours” is a fascinating documentary and you might enjoy other episodes, which, because of our exchanges, I found out are on Youtube and in English. The premise is, they pick a location, then spend 72 hours (three full days) filming people that show up, random encounters and slice of life stuff.
The Yamanote line is the ultimate cool train line. It just goes round and around central Tokyo in a circle. You can get a cheap day pass, get off at any stop and find something interesting, then get back on.
The theme song at the end of the documentary is truncated, about half its actual length. That song sort of sneaked up on me . . . if I was introduced to it with a lot of fuss and fanfare (like I did) I might not like it as much. But I got used to it as background music and then it was like, “Hey that song is actually really good. What is it, anyway?”
If this is playable, Nao does Kawaberi live from 21:40 here: