Karaoke: Goodnight Agnes Chan

I usually try to find videos with Japanese lyrics attached so you can perform from the safety of your own home before making your debut at the snack bar, but the translations will have to do this time. It's a pretty easy song anyways.



Fret not! I have one more with lyrics: This is probably her most famous song (i.e. findable in that karaoke machine).

So the singer is Agnes Chan (Japanese: アグネス・チャン). She is actually a Hong Kong-born singer, a novelist, a UNICEF ambassador, and a professor. That all makes me feel unaccomplished, but I can drown my sorrows in singing at least.

The thing about the name is for name with the same character as hers, we say Chen, Chin, or Chan in English, but in Japan the standard is just Chin. She just seems to be an exception to the Chin rule, probably because they used her English name (lots of English singing goes on in Hong Kong and almost all Chinese stars have two names). In Agnes' case, her original name's hanzi is 陳 (which has an on-yomi of chin), the same as one of my Chinese classmates, Chin-kun. I don't know why she chose Agnes for her first name though.]

Another 陳 is Jackie Chan (born Chan Kong Sang), who has many names. Jackie gets to break the chin-barrier in Japan too. Agnes and Jackie sang together at some point, but I have yet to track that song(s) down. I did see Jackie singing with Annie Defranko though.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention Richard Yung Ka Tsai, a songwriter and musician that worked with her and collected some of his old works on his youtube page.