A particle is character that marks a part of a sentence with grammatical meaning, such as the subject of an action verb, the topic of discussion, or the location of where something is or will take place. Particles allow for parts of a sentence to be moved around in a way that in English might not sound so grammatically correct. For example:
All translate equivalently to:
Following a time, denotes when a verb occurs.
Following a location, denotes where something is with あります or います.
Or following a location, denotes the destination of a movement verb.
Can replace は as the topic marker of a sentence.
When following a noun, marks it as the subject for certain verbs.
Following a sentence (but before a comma or period), functions as "but", joining the sentence to whatever sentence follows.
私の
メサカレッジで
あのクラスのために、教授で私がクワイアに入るの聞かれて、私はしました。 Because of that class, when I was asked by the professor to join the choir, I did.
私は数年にあのクワイアで歌って、たくさんの会った友達はまだ私の友達です。 I sang in that choir for several years, and many of the friends that I met are still my friends.
クワイアといしょに、イーストコーストと、メキシコのプエブラと、チェコのピルセンとプラーグと、 プーランドのクラクフとワルシャワへ行ったことがあります。 With the choir I've been to the east coast, to Puebla Mexico, to Pilsen and Prague Czechia, and to Krakow and Warsaw Poland.
とくにチェコとポーランドで、私も時々ソロを歌ったことがあります I've even sung solos from time to time, in particular in Czechia and Poland.
転校するまであのクワイアといしょに歌いましたが、そこで会った友達から、私は教会で歌手のアルバイトをもらいました I sang with the choir until I transfered, but because of a friend I met there I received a part-time job as a singer at a church.
そして、歌手になることで、私は音楽がさらに大好きいになりました And, becoming a musician has made me love music even more.
だから、大学で音楽を勉強するのが始めることにしました。 That's why I decided to start studying music in college.
私はメサカレッジですべての音楽のクラスを受講して、チューターになりました。 I took all the music theory classes at Mesa College and became a tutor.
大学を始めに私の専攻はコンピューターサイエンスでしたが、転校時に私の専攻は音楽と応用数学になりました。 When I started college my major was computer science, but when I transfered it had become music and applied mathematics.
（でも、何よりも私はプログラマーです。） (But foremost I am a programmer.)
これまでに、私はSDSUで全ての私の専攻の音楽のクラスを受講しましたが、私たちのチャンバークワイアといしょにまだ歌っています。 So far, I have taken all my major music classes at SDSU, but I am still singing with our chamber choir.
In the landscape of modern Japanese music, City Pop (シチィ・ポップ) was a glitzy, short-lived and fairly loosely defined genre of music which reflected the optimistic state of Japanese metropolitan life in the eighties. Throughout the years, city pop has been criticized for being vapid, adored for being optimistic, and fairly recently has had a resurgence in popularity due to nostalgia.
Following the second World War, Japan faced incredible difficulties in rebuilding its economy as well as its social identity. The entire Japanese colonial empire had been dissolved; in 1974 a new democratic constitution was established; in the mid fifties Japan finally regained its autonomy and joined the United Nations. However, the Japanese economy throughout the fifties and seventies experienced what is now known as the "Japanese economic miracle", resulting in Japan skyrocketing in prosperity to become the second largest economy in the world, second only to the United States. This shocking ascent was the result of Japan's rapid technological advancements and resulting domination of the world's consumer electronic sector. Much of seventies and eighties pop-culture throughout the world is remembered through the popularity of Japanese exports like Sony's Walkman and boomboxes (also dominated by Japanese brands). As a result of the economic miracle, metropolitan Japan exploded into technological, neon-tinted wonderlands, and the middle class expanded dramatically. Seemingly everyone was living a life of relative luxury, and musical appetites prompted a new genre which would convey the general feeling of optimism.
As a genre, City pop is very loosely defined. At its earliest, the sound was an adoption of American (or specifically Californian) bands like Buffalo Springfield (which in themselves were adaptations of rock-and-roll into psychedelic and folk rock, in a revolutionary/reactionary anti-Vietnam fashion). The 70's Tokyo based band Happy End is an often cited example of such a band; their capability in turning this fairly new American sound into a distinctly Japanese one was immensely influential upon the burgeoning landscape of Japanese music. In the late seventies, city pop songs would become more expansive in their songwriting and instrumentation, drawing especially from jazz (in particular jazz-fusion) and soul genres in their use of dominant seventh and major seventh harmonizations and progressions, and use of instruments like jazz guitar, organ, percussion (kit, bongos, tambourine, shakers, etc.) and electronically synthesized sounds.
Perhaps a bit ahead of her time, Taeko Ohnuki began to produce jazz-fusion soul ballads characterized by solos for flute and guitar, a soul backing chorus, synthesizers, jazz piano, and jazz progression schemes. Music like hers hit popular highs in the eighties, providing a sympathetically upbeat soundtrack to Tokyo city life. Another pioneer of the genre was Tatsuro Yamashita. Yamashita saw massive popularity, and is now consider the "king" of the genre in its entirety. His music truly evokes the glamor of the eighties: miami nights but in Tokyo, well captured in the art of Eizin Suzuki. Backed by this new sound, the optimism and comfort of the eighties felt like a never-ending party. However, the good times were not to last.
In 1991 Japan saw the burst of its asset price bubble, and the decade which followed is now
referred to as the lost decade/generation (
But as years have passed, and the economic situation has generally stabilized (although growth has stagnated), eighties nostalgia has led to a return in the popularity of city pop. As distinct products of our ever evolving internet culture and nostalgia for all things eighties, genres like vapor-wave and outrun harken back to the effortlessly optimistic, albeit largely imaginary and rose-tinted, music and visual styles of the eighties. Modern bands like Lamp, Kirinji and Tricot utilize a lot of the same expansive song writing techniques as the city pop bands of the eighties. The music by Lamp especially has a nostalgic quality to it; see the music video for their song 1998 below.
As such, a lot of modern music which draws inspiration from city pop is coated with a layer of skepticism; remembering and longing for decades past, while recognizing where we are today and how far we've come. But sometimes taking a pure, unadulterated nostalgia trip is fun, and as such city pop lives on in popularity throughout the niches of the internet. The old city pop sound has become new again, and in its image is much of the music, movies, and TV programs of modern popular culture which we enjoy to this day.
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