Showing posts with label Kootnikoff David Yuko. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kootnikoff David Yuko. Show all posts

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Prague: Charles Bridge, Early Morn

Charles Bridge in the early morn
Just after a hailstorm
The clouds unleashed and on their way
From Letna to Vinohrady

You're as beautiful as the day we met
In that mountain town I'll never forget
The way the snow falls and the onsen steams
It's a floating world, we are as we dream

What brought us here, I'll never know
It's the same force that makes the river flow
Statues stand like wilting shadows
In their hands they hold buckets of rainbows
Last week was Yuko's birthday, but rather than just limit it to one day, we like to celebrate a "birthday week". After being together for a few years, it gets harder and harder to come up with an original gift. So this year I wrote the song, "Charles Bridge, Early Morn", and commissioned a painting from Steve Meyers, an old high school friend from White Rock. It's from a photo of Yuko on our last morning in Prague this past summer.


There had just been a weird mid-summer hailstorm that week and the air was still damp and chilly. We'd woken up at 6 am so we could enjoy the scene without the tourist hoards and we weren't disappointed. Yuko snapped a few photos of me playing guitar and then I passed it her. She struck some poses and then spontaneously leapt up in the air. Now it's in our living room, a family heirloom from our journey through the floating world.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Sukiyaki Song: David & Yuko Sing!



Here we are serenading our Japanese nephews - Kai & Koh - with Sakamoto Kyu's classic, "上を向いて歩こう (Ue Wo Muite Arukō)" aka "Sukiyaki Song." "Ue Wo Muite Arukō," translated as "I'll Walk With My Head Held High," means keeping your spirits up, even when times are bad and you might be feeling lonely. Originally released in Japan in 1961, it became a North American Number 1 hit in June 1963, the first (and last) Japanese song ever to do so.


Sadly, Sakamoto died in a Japan Airlines crash near Gunma - where we lived for a year in 1999-2000 - on August 12, 1985 at 43. Here he is singing the original in 1963: