Musical Chairs of Association

At precisely 6:00 this morning, it struck me that Japan has forever affected my musical associations. The timing was not random, for the wakeup call of Edelweiss had just commenced over my village's loud speaker, as it does every morning. I will think of these wakeup calls moreso than The Sound of Music whenever I hear it played. Other scrambled music associations I have acquired here include:

• Auld Lang Syne. It will make me think of the closing of Japanese stores each evening as much as the closing of passing years each New Year's midnight.
• The Beatles. The group is classic, but I now associate John, Paul, George and Ringo with Japanese men singing bad karaoke. It seems Beatlemania never left this country.
• The Carpenters. This sibling duo has also become Japanese to me (and not because Karen Carpenter was rail-thin and died from anorexia). I can't believe they're so crazy about them here. Does anybody even listen to them in the States? (I'm not suggesting they should.)
• Englishman in New York. I still love this song, but from now on, whenever I hear Sting sing its lyrics, somewhere in the back of my mind I will also be hearing lyrics to Jamaican in Japan--a song set to the same tune but with alternate lyrics performed presumably by a Jamaican singer. I hear it quite often on the airwaves.
• Tupac. I don't listen much to this rapper's music, but whenever I do hear it, I think of the train station 2 villages over grafittied with his name.
• White America. This ditty from one The Eminem Show album will forever conjure up memories of my not-so-White Japanese high school's cultural festival where this song was blasted uncensored over the sound system.
• When the Saints Go Marching In. This song has absolutely no religious meaning in this country, unless Mr. Max has a cult that I'm not aware of. The Japanese department store obviously isn't clued in to the strategy of playing pleasant music so customers shop longer. I can no longer hear the melody without the obnoxious singing of, "Oh happy day! Blah, blah, blah, Mr. Max!" (Okay, so maybe I don't know it word for word, but that's not due to lack of exposure.)
• Take Me Home, Country Roads. The country roads I envision when this John Denver hit is played are no longer in West Virginia, but in inaka Japan. Maybe that's why the Japanese love this song--they have so many country roads to link it to.