Going through my files of past Blog entries, I was surprised to see that I'd somehow missed one of my old "Favorite J-Pop Singles" essays on Tomosaka Rie's song "Escalation" when I transferred everything over from my old VOX Blog, so I thought I'd just repost it again. Original post was in 2008...
Back in 1995 or so, J-pop buyer Dave handed me a pre-order sheet of a new “talento”, a cute idol/singer who ws about to release her very first single. The artist name was Tomosaka Rie, and her single was a song called “Escalation”. “So, you want me to order that single for you?” asked Dave, to which I quickly replied, “Oh yeah, I’ll give THIS chick a whirl..she’s a cutie!”
A few weeks later, the single arrived, and I was pleasantly surprised with the song, since blindly ordering a single based on sheer looks was pretty much a gamble! Soon enough I loved the song, and in a happy coincidence, later that month, I found out that Rie Tomosaka was to appear on MUSIC STATION! I couldn't wait!
WOW, seeing pretty Rie for the first time was awesome- She was just simply adorable, giggling and winning over everyone there, and my was she CUTE!Then she got up to sing…and I was TOTALLY shocked when, INSTEAD of Escalation, she sang a DIFFERENT song from her NEWEST single! The song she sang was a song called “Kushami” (sneeze), and cute Rie kept giggling throughout the performance, proving (at least) that she wasn’t a lip-syncher! Ahh! Here was a new, fun Rie Tomosaka song that I didn’t have! And though I searched in vain, at that time, the powers that be had decided I would not own a copy of that single! (I'd get a copy of it later from a friend)
Thus we return to the original single “Escalation” , the song that while NOT the one I’d seen performed, IS the one that got me started loving her. Later, I would know her better as an actress in such shows as UE O MUITE ARUKO (with Nishida Hikaru!) and TABLOID (with Takako Tokiwa), and of course, nowadays people know her as pretty incense peddler Chika in the NHK Taiga Drama ATSUHIME! Going online recently, I was ECSTATIC to see that there in fact WERE clips of Rie promoting "Escalation" on music shows, and I'm finally getting to see them after all these years!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com
