"Senpuuki" by Nogizaka46 (2013)

For the music video, please click here.
For the English lyrics to the song, please click here.

About Nogizaka46

To date, this is the only "new" song featured here in this blog. So why am I writing about this song? What do I remember about the past that I am relating to this Japanese pop (Jpop) song?

But first, some introduction:

• Nogizaka46 was created as an "official rival" group to the world's biggest female group AKB48, which also has the same founder.
• Nogizaka46 debuted in 2012, the same year AKB48's "queen" "graduated", in other words, departed from the group.
• "Senpuuki" is Japanese for electric fan. The word sounds cute, right?

The keyword for this post is electric fan.

Member Saito Asuka "speaking" to an electric fan. She is the center of the "Senpuuki" music video

The past involving an electric fan or two

The ceiling fan was the kind of fan that I grew up with, as far as I can remember of my childhood. Every time I went to sleep or took a nap, I would stare at it, watched it turn its blades around. I used to have a fear that it would come off the ceiling and fall on me, either wounding me or killing me.

Ceiling fan

The time came when my family decided to own our own house. We moved to the province and stayed for a while at a house owned by one of my mother's relatives. My father thought about buying the house and its lot because he liked the idea of living closer to the beach.

The house had no ceiling fans, so a relative lent to us her standing fan. A standing fan? It was the first time I ever saw such type of fan. As someone who was accustomed to ceiling fans, I found the invention strange. I can't remember if we returned it to our relative after we bought our own electric fans and moved to a permanent home.

So at our permanent home, we moved on with life. We went to school, our parents took up some farming and fishing, and two years later, my mother went to the capital for work. Her employers sought her out, persuaded her to work for them again. She was allowed vacation. At times, she brought new electric fans home.

Standing electric fans

Electric costs: the suffering

Like every other family, we struggled with rising electric costs and broken electric fans. My father managed to fix them, so we would not have to pay a repairman or buy new ones. But we were powerless against rising electric costs.

I don't know but I seemed to be the most affected about electric costs than anyone in my family. The situation (or perhaps fear or worry) got hold of me, pushing me to make sacrifices. I was forced to forgo the electric fan. It wasn't easy at first for me to live life, sleep, or do things under the sweltering heat. I urged or appealed to my siblings to forgo the electric fan too, but they weren't ready to make such a sacrifice. My insistence led to quarrels.

Desk fan

I felt that my sacrifices would be for naught. We did see some decrease in the electric bill but my sacrifice weren't worth it, especially that my family did not support me much. But the best thing was that it helped me endure the heat, get along with the warm weather. I am now used to hot nights.

I am now used to life without electric fans. Family and friends would ask if I use one at my place. They even tell me to buy a portable fan, the types sold at stores that sell China-made goods. But why buy when I have a hand fan (the one given away by politicians during elections)?

Oh yeah, the portable fan. A classmate once donated a portable fan to my class as our classroom was the only one without an electric fan. Speaking of donations too, the parents of one schoolmate donated a big electric to their sons' class and even got a recognition for it at the closing and recognition program 13 years ago.

Think about everyday household items that bring back the memories.

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