Song of the day (10)

Song: Kiseki

Artist: Greeeen

Album: Ā, Domo. Ohisashiburi Desu.

Year: 2008

        Writing about Rookies, today, made me remember how much I loved its theme song Kiseki. Listening to it, always, made me feel happy and optimistic. It's a romantic song but a cheerful one, the lyrics are nice. Besides, I liked Rookies so much, so the song brings good memories. However, Rookies is not the only memory it brings.

Kiseki reminds me of our second visit to the Japanese foundation in Cairo.

       The Japanese foundation in downtown, Cairo, is like a Japanese cultural center. It was the embassy before it moved to Maadi. On our first visit to the foundation, I and Summar met at El-Manial and went there together by the Metro. It gets you right beside the tower where the foundation is located. On the second visit we were supposed to meet there. On that day, the underground gate that lead to the tower was closed. I had to leave from another gate. The streets were barricaded to block the way to Tahrir square. Then I realized I had to get there from the opposite direction and I ended up in Garden City. For me, and for many I dare say, Garden city is one hell of a maze. You keep going and going and then you end up where you started. It took me an hour to get out of there. Eventually I found my way to the tower where I met Summar.

      The foundation has a small library. The library has manga, magazines and Japanese teaching books. It also has audio CDs, anime figures and other stuff. However, all the books there are in Japanese and only Japanese, not a single word in English or Arabic, even the teaching ones. So, reading a book or a manga was out of the question. We'd go around though, check the book covers and the manga they have, flip through the magazines for anything that looks familiar and that's it. Since, it took me a great deal of walking, that day, to get there, we couldn't settle for this, so we went for the audio CDs. We checked for any band we knew and there was Greeeen and Mr. Children. So, I and Summar sat there and listened to the songs on the CDs of both bands. On Greeeen's CD there was Kiseki! :D

       Kiseki was on the top of the Billboard Japan hot 100 for the year 2008. It was, also, certified as the bestselling download single in Japan by Guinness world records.