As some of you may recall my friend Dr Doug was the person who introduced me to Puffy some years ago when we worked together. He has since moved back to Tokyo so I met up with him and his lovely wife Sumi. This was part of the reason returning to visit Japan as they are very special people to us and life is short and often unpredictable. We had to go.
Doug burned a weekend hanging out with us and doing more touristy things than a local expat might. We diverted to a music store in Shibuya: Tsutaya. I controlled myself and limited myself to the Puffy 20th Anniversary CD set.
According to Dr Doug, Puffy is not really popular any more. I think album sales, little new material and general inactivity bear this out, but it was kind of shocking to hear it to my face. The truth is kind of like that, so there you have it.
Anyways I did have a funny encounter with hearing Puffy. I was in Don Quixote is Asakusa and doing a quick exploration of the store. It has everything. Luggage, snacks, drinks, t-shirts, sporting goods, cosmetics, sex toys... a condensed Japanese department store. On the stairs up near the top level there was a dingy beach display with a beach chair and retro boombox. Not eye catching at all, until coming from the worn out boombox Puffy's Electric Beach Fever.
I probably looked goofier than normal standing there having a fun laugh about that.
