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.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Kohmi Hirose -- Shiawase wo Tsukamitai (幸せをつかみたい)



I was in Japan for just a month into my long stay and I was still getting settled in my new digs in Ichikawa. Of course, being December, the Christmas commercials were starting to pop up, especially those for Tokyo Disneyland (just a stone's throw away from the apartment). At the same time, the ski resorts were also powering up for the season, and the Japanese just L-O-V-E to ski (ski suki, see?....terrible oyaji joke). So Alpen, a famous winter sporting goods company, started throwing their ads on screen. Their sonic spokesperson? Leather-lunged Kohmi Hirose(広瀬香味美).

It was the first time for me to hear this lady with this powerful voice as she sang a portion of her latest hit, "Shiawase wo Tsukamitai"(I Wanna Grab That Happiness) on the Alpen commercial. There was that one note in the refrain where I thought she was gonna crack the ceiling. As usual, it's a funky uptempo song which probably has attracted a ton of the young folk onto the slopes over the years as a Pavlovian response. Written and composed by Hirose herself, her 5th single peaked at No. 6 on Oricon.




However, being someone who would like to give as complete a song as possible, here is a karaoke video of someone trying the song. Speaking of karaoke, on TV Japan, via NHK, for the past several weeks, the singer has also put on a teacher's cap as she teaches a trio of students (two tarento and one university student) on how to excel in the karaoke box. Hirose-sensei is very much the nurturing den mother here. As for me, if I ever attended her class, I'd probably end up with a dunce cap in the corner.

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