Hi! It's been 2 months!!

I guess many of you would have got it from the news or tabloids, but my new song is coming soon finally! In Japanese! It's already wrapped up. The release date is a few months away, though, as it will be used as the theme song for the film ("Haru no Yuki") and needs to go on sale in timing with the release of the film. It's been received quite well by people at my work who have listened to it!! For your information, the title is "Be My Last." Bii Mai Lasuto. I didn't intentionally mean to release an another ballad following "Dareka no Negai ga Kanau Koro" and I also have some non-ballad new songs up my sleeve, but the release order turned out to deliver consecutive ballads. I want you all to listen to it soon.

Tokorode (by the way) tokoroten. (seaweed gel cut into noodles)
I wrote it to try to get a laugh but I admit this pun stands far from it! (I still like it, though, and that's why I leave it as it is)
I, who grew up in an obsessive-craze-for-vinegar family and love those foods that I can pour as much vinegar as I like, am a longtime lover of tokoroten for my age. I've always been a kid that ordered vinegar as a side along with tokoroten when I was taken to Wagashiya (Japanese-style confection stores) ("Toraya," to be exact) since I was little! Yes! My gags are not funny today. (Aw, this is hopeless . . . I gave up . . . )

I'm not a brand-obsessed gourmet so I usually get packaged ones, easy-to-open like creme caramel packs and easy-to-find in convenience stores, but this summer I've had a dramatic experience for the very first time in my life of 22 years.

Tokoroten disappeared from the towns on the day after tokoroten was featured in "Aru-aru Daijiten." All tokorotens were sold out, even in my usual supermarket and convenience store!! That was a shock to me. I won't forget this summer. I felt frustration, like that of when the girl you secretly had had a crush on blossomed quickly after summer break, got popular and you had a bunch of rivals everywhere. I actually don't know that sort of frustration, though.

Soon the situation became normal and now I'm able to buy as many of them as I like again. Lately what I've been struggling with is draining off packaged tokorotens. No matter how carefully I do the draining, some of tokoroten itself often drain into the kitchen sink and sometimes almost a half of it . . . it occurs in an instant. Without a sound! Exactly like "the door to you vanished without a sound." Am I so bad at draining things? I feel rather powerless. Those which were to have slid down my esophagus, actually ran down the water pipes without knowing my mucous membranes . . .

When about a half of tokoroten run into the sink, I look at them lying down helplessly in the sink and think "oh my, please let it be . . . Be My Last . . . to have this painful feeling . . . (*cries*)" but the tragedy repeats itself.

Does this mean I'm all too poor at draining?? I have no object of comparison as I've never seen others draining off tokorotens.

I'm s-sorry to write this long about things like this, in ages . . . it's what I wanted to say most of all---.


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(NOTES by Nuuk)
"Haru no Yuki" ... "Snowy Love Fallin' in Spring" aka "Spring Snow," written by Mishima Yukio - a Japanese writer. (1925-1970)
"Aru-aru Daijiten" ... "Encyclopedia of Living," a Japanese TV show.