The year is 2000 or 2001. Argentine comedian Alfredo Casero, known in the country for a quite revolutionary comedy show on TV called “Cha Cha Cha”, which aired in the early 90’s, went to a Japanese restaurant to eat some sushi, a dish that had just arrived to the country and was the latest culinary hype.
In between maki and nigiri, he heard a song on the loudspeakers of the restaurant, called “Shima Uta”, by a Japanese group named The Boom. The coup de coeur was immediate.
He asked the waiter for the name of the song, and the next day he somehow found a copy of the CD in Buenos Aires, got obsessed with it, and ended up deciding to record a cover… in Japanese. Because why not.
Needless to say, Alfredo Casero speaks Japanese as well as I speak Klingon. Never mind, Japanese pronounciation is quite easy for Spanish speakers apparently, so he learned the lyrics phonetically, as one does, and recorded the song.
Lo and behold, the song topped the charts in Argentina, and against all odds, even became a hit in Japan.
The official video of the song features a “making of” at the end, and it’s hilarious.
Not only that, but in 2002 the football world cup took place in Japan & South Korea… and I kid you not, The Boom invited Casero to sing the song with them, live, in a stadium in Japan.
There’s something unusually Argentine about this whole story. Naive, bold, stupid, brilliant, funny.