Time Card / タイムカード

Time Card / TAIMU KĀDO / タイムカード

I suppose you could say that “Time Card” is the titular song of the album, TIME NOTE, although that might be a stretch. “Time Card” is a hikigatari piece from 2007; I figured it’d be a nice change from the mainstream-sounding song from last week.

The song starts off somewhat slowly, and you might think it’s a little repetitive if you don’t understand the lyrics, but hold out until the chorus, because that’s where the song really gets its character.

タイムカード [music.163.com]

Admittedly, this is one of her more plain pieces and I wouldn’t call it one of her best, so it may take a slightly different approach to appreciate it fully. She plays well and sings beautifully, but I wouldn’t call this song very noteworthy, relatively speaking. However, I do find it enjoyable to listen to when nothing around me is moving.

Toshiue no Kare / 年上の彼

Toshiue no Kare / 年上の彼: “older guy”

toshiue / 年上

An older person; “senior”

no / の

A particle indicating identity

kare / 彼

“he”; “boyfriend”

This song is definitely one of her more mainstream-sounding songs. It’s the second track on her 2012 album, “good-bye”, which contained other songs that could be described as more mainstream. Having said that, even if you much prefer her hikigatari works, I still recommend listening to the whole thing at least once.

年上の彼 [music.163.com]

Her vocals are pretty strong, and the arrangement, if you can take it, is actually fairly well done.

However, as you might expect with it being mainstream-sounding and all, I didn’t like it much at first. I don’t think I ended up appreciating it until about a year and a half after I first heard the song. I woke up one morning with the song in my head, even though I hadn’t heard it for months. It happens sometimes: I wake up with a song in my head that I previously didn’t like, and from that day on, I find an appreciation for it and end up really enjoying it.

As for the meaning of the lyrics, I have no idea. The machine translation is too garbled for me to make anything out of it without too much effort. We’ll have to get someone to translate them sometime.

ta.la.la

ta.la.la

Here’s an odd one from her indies days. “ta.la.la” is the second track of her 2004 indies single, “Hanabi”. It’s odd in that it’s heavily arranged with voice layering, which contrasts almost all of her other indies works, which are hikigatari. Having said that, I’ve grown to appreciate it.

I’m surprised, that she agreed to do it, though, because the impression that I got from a machine translation of her history pages^[jp] is that she refused to do anything but piano hikigatari.

Regardless, here it is for us to enjoy.

奥華子＿ta.la.la by レオン・シュタイナー [Nico Nico Douga]

2014 in review

Another year has come to an end, and the WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for Thoughts on Oku Hanako!

Here's an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,900 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

View the complete report. Thanks everyone for a great year, and enjoy the year to come!