Takako Mamiya -- Chinese Restaurant （チャイニーズ・レストラン）

Ah, it's a Friday night. Time for some City Pop. But as a humble lead-up to a segue to tonight's song, I have to say that even some years after returning from Japan, I do miss the ol' Kanto a lot. However, coming back to Toronto, I think all of us here are quite blessed by the wealth and reasonable prices of Chinese food in my burg. We've got at least 5 Chinatowns here in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and meeting up with my anime buddy two Sundays a month, I've had a chance to sample some fine Cantonese/Mandarin/Szechuan fare pretty regularly. Of course, I also get the opportunity to have the usual takeout stuff as well which I also enjoy. Y'know...chop suey, sweet n' sour pork/chicken, etc. My buddy and his friends might pooh-pooh those last couple of items as the fake stuff but, hey, it's all good to me.

Now in Japan, there seems to be two classes of Chinese restaurant: the regular corner eatery which would be serving mainly ramen but also dishes like mabo dofu, spring rolls and subuta (sweet n' sour pork), and the places that have the high-end cuisine including dim sum and Peking Duck with restaurant exteriors that look like you need to surreptitiously pass the doorman a few bills to even get past the gate. And sure enough, the few times I've been able to get into those places in Yokohama, it cost me a pretty yen...thousands and thousands of them actually. Delicious stuff to be sure but my wallet and I are quite grateful here in Toronto.

So I present to you, "Chinese Restaurant" by Takako Mamiya（間宮貴子）. Ms. Mamiya, due to the fact that she only released one album "Love Trip" in 1982 and also because I'm a huge City Pop fan, is perhaps the only singer on this blog whose category and album are one and the same. Yup, I've got three more entries covering tracks from "Love Trip" (well, two actually since I had to demote one article to Draft since any audio for "All or Nothing" has been cleared from the Net),

"Chinese Restaurant" was written by Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）and composed by Katsu Hoshi（星勝）, and as with the other songs by Mamiya, it's another mellow Perrier-friendly tune to be played over the speakers at some sunny lakeside cafe under a huge multi-coloured umbrella. I don't really think it quite fits the Chinese restaurant atmosphere but the lyrics only have the singer wistfully wondering whether her old lover still remembers their first meeting at such a restaurant. I'm sure the two cracked open fortune cookies at the end of dinner looking for affirmation of their burgeoning love....and feeling suddenly hungry again a few hours later.

As for this coming weekend, I will most likely be heading with my friend for some early lunch at an Asian Legend. Soymilk soup, here I come!

One of the mainstays in Old Chinatown