Turning Japanese

The Japanese Garden at The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), part of the University of London.

I'm turning Japanese
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so

Turning Japanese
The Vapors

For some reason, when I first went to university in the very early 80s we had a running joke for a while that I was part Japanese (I dunno how it started) and this kinda became my song - at least while it lasted on juke boxes. (It wasn't my personal choice you understand).

Coincidentally, there was a really interesting programme on Radio 4 last Saturday about the way in which western composers appropriated certain musical features (such as the sequence of notes that starts this track) as being eastern (typically Japanese or Chinese) even though such sounds don't occur naturally in eastern music. This was done so successfully that they have now become a very well recognised part of our (western) musical culture.