One occupational hazard of being a musician is the susceptibility to ear worms. Certain tunes creep into your existence and take over your sound space. You can’t get rid of it until you’ve written it down, performed, recorded, published it, or let another ear worm take its place. Omoide, the song that opens every episode of the Netflix series Midnight Diner, is such an ear worm. Fingerpicked on the folk (steel-string) guitar, Mr Suzuki’s song has interesting origins. I had to transcribe it for the low G ukulele.
Midnight Diner is about a small restaurant in Tokyo’s bustling Shinjuku district that opens at midnight and closes at 7 am. Each 20-minute episode opens with the same introduction: guitar accompaniment and male vocalist. Every episode ends with pointers on how to cook the meal chosen. However, the stories are not just about food. The stories are about people, not your average family or people you’d meet everyday but interesting coincidences and heartfelt connections.
What I love about the series is how the stories in the diner remind me of the cozy restaurants I’ve dined in Japan and elsewhere. I think of the small communities we create and the comfort in the familiar.
When a fellow Bostonian first mentioned the Netflix series in a Zoom class, I mentally bookmarked to check it out. A year or two later, I am finally watching the series before it leaves Netflix on 1st June. I’ve had to binge watch the three seasons with 10 episodes each. I have 8 episodes to go. That’s 8 x 20 minutes (not counting the preludes and postludes).
Thanks to Phil Ward who not only recorded it but also made his guitar tabs available, guitarists can replicate the instrumental part of the song. All I had to do was to transcribe it for ukulele with minor adaptations. The original is in B minor. Capo on the second fret to play along.
My attempt to catch the ear worm opened up many questions. Where did the song come from? Who was the composer? What do the Japanese lyrics mean?
Apparently, the tune is not original but based on an old Irish ballad. The lyricist Tsunekichi Suzuki or Suzuki Tsunekichi (鈴木常吉) had written and performed Omoide independently of the the Japanese drama series. Sadly he died in July 2020 at the age of 65.
There’s so much more to find out – about the song, the composer, the Tokyo stories of the diner.
I couldn’t resist sharing the first 15 seconds of this tune when I spotted a Steinway upright piano in a bed and breakfast in Provincetown (the northern tip of Cape Cod), Massachusetts yesterday.