This is one of my favorite Japanese songs sung by Yamashita Tomohisa who is definitely my favorite superstar. The name of this song translated to English is Colorful. Earlier this year, I had a fever of watching Japanese TV series, and I got to know Yamashita when I was watching Nobuta wo Produce, one of his most famous TV series. The song is collected in the album of Original Sound Tracks of that show. However, actually this song is the second theme song of Yamashita's another TV series, Dragon Sakura, which is probably my favorite Japanese TV series and has a significant impact on me.
Dragon Sakura is a really good TV show. I highly recommend it to every teenager (or adults, who have interests in educating their children). It's about a group of students in high school who are really bad at study and everyone including their parents and themselves had already given up hope upon them. However, one day a strange man came into this school and he claimed to be their new teacher. He used several strange methods to teach them math, Japanese, English and other required subjects for passing the National College Entrance Exam in Japan (for example, he asked the students to play ping pong while answering math questions, because he said it would enhance the speed of their calculating).
Unlike other teachers who only care about student's grades, the man cares more about students themselves. He cares about their health, asks for their parents' whole-heart supports and harshly criticizes those conventional teachers who look down upon these students.
Whenever the students want to give up or lose confidence in themselves, the man won't encourage them but instead he will say something that would make the students really angry and motivated, and after that in order to "revenge" on the man, the students will study even harder to prove what the man said was wrong. At last, among the six students, there're three of them get into Tokyo University, the best college in Japan, and the rest of them all understand the importance of learning.
The song, whose lyrics are written by Yamashita himself, is also encouraging. Yamashita said he wrote the song in order to demonstrate the life current teenagers are experiencing. He said we all have such moments that we don't know the meaning of life and wonder why life has to be continued. However, once we become stronger and get through all the difficulties, we will see the colorfulness of the world, and will have a blue sky. I deeply believe in every word he said.
The time when I was watching Dragon Sakura, I was waiting for offers from American Universities I had applied. I dreamed of going to Northwestern University, but as a result I got rejected. Then I became really frustrated and depressed that before I watched Dragon Sakura, I indulged myself in numerous TV series and animations that I just wasted a lot of time doing nothing meaningful! But luckily, I ran into Dragon Sakura, and compared to the students in the TV show, I was in a much better condition than them: my study is good, my parents support me and at least I don't have to worry that I won't get into any college for higher education. Yet, those students have more motivation than me to fight for better life. They haven't yet given up, why should I? Just due to a silly university's silly rejection?
Now I thank Dragon Sakura very much that it has taught me to move forward. There're thousands of life in this world. We shouldn't be stuck at one mistake or failure that there're many other wonderful things waiting for us to discover.
