Make Believe Mailer #136: A Definitive Ranking Of The Yuming Songs Featured In "Watashi Wo Ski Ni Tsuretette!"

The Sound, Sights And Skis Of The Bubble Era

Note: spoilers for a decades-old movie follow

Watashi Wo Ski Ni Tsuretette! isn’t a defining film of Japan’s dizzying Bubble days because it’s good, but rather because it’s flashy. Passages of the movie look like footage that would be looped inside a Sports Chalet’s winter aisle, made up of skiers zipping down powdery slopes while wearing attention-grabbing clothes. Multiple stretches center on our main characters doing goofy tricks, less of advancing any plot but more about making a trip up to Nagano Prefecture seem fun.

There’s a story within this snow-tastic lifestyle piece — actually, like two narratives — but its ultimately secondary to celebrating a trendy activity (director Yasuo Baba seemingly saying as much, as he could see it coming). Rewatching this film recently on a plane ride, I was struck how the central romantic tension of Ski Ni Tsuretette technically resolves itself halfway through. Most rom-coms would save the moment the couple comes together for the end, but not this one, which gets it out of the way before returning to the lift (and the perils of…working for a company making ski goods?).

I was also reminded how weird Ski Ni Tsuretette is, particularly when you consider it’s status as among the most referenced and parodied Japanese films of the Heisei era onward. It’s a romance flick, but one where all drama ends halfway in and the movie becomes about the thrills of time management. There’s wacky inventions, bizarre comedy bits (a surgeon taking phone calls while slicing a patient up) and a stretch where two women race a Toyota Celica GT-Four through the white stuff…eventually flipping over?! For a fun skiing film, death hovers around Ski Ni Tsuretette a lot, especially in its climax where our main characters need to traverse a dangerous route connecting Nagano with Gifu at night to help…the protagonist’s employer¹.

Together, it makes for ideal brain-off entertainment (the sort that works wonders on a trans-Pacific flight). The general fun and flashy tone of Ski Ni Tsuretette ultimately results in a celebration of leisure, and the film helped spark a “ski boom” in Japan. It’s defining legacy is one of consumerism — look at the Japanese Wiki page for it, and gaze upon its “influence” section, marked largely by stuff you could buy. This is why it’s a perfect movie for Japan’s glitziest period.

It’s an easy reference not just because of distinct visuals — the part where Tomoyo Harada makes a finger gun, iconic — but because of how well it captures the spirit of the ‘80s. Everyone had money…and plenty of ways to spend it! Everything seemed shinier and fluffier and downright fancier. Ad campaigns now…like, literally, from just under two weeks ago…still lean into the vibe of Ski Ni Tsuretette…including one of its most vital details, the music provided by Yumi Matsutoya.

That this five minute commercial is not far off from multiple parts of the film itself underlines how it isn’t the most…serious movie ever made.

According to histories of Ski Ni Tsuretette, Baba thought Yuming’s music wasn’t just a good fit for his winter work, but essential. It makes sense. On one level, Matsutoya had already explored the idea of a trendy snow wonderland on her 1980 album Surf & Snow, a work later being credited as being an early sign of a ski boom to come in Japan. So, natural fit.

Yet she’s just as perfect because of how rich her music came off. Forget Tatsuro Yamashita or Anri or anyone who has become associated as the face of “city pop” during the ongoing discovery of it globally — Yuming is the sound of the Bubble era, both in the melodies she deployed sounding pricey as hell (mixing session players with the latest instrument developments for the time) and her songs celebrating the leisure and fun coming alongside a roaring economy. Japanese critics for and against her work often come to the same conclusion — her music nails the carefree energy of the decade, in all its excess.

Thanks to Ski Ni Tsuretette once again being revisited for commercial / nostalgia reasons, my recent rewatch and the fact it’s stupid cold in Japan right now which means the final weeks where one can ski are upon us², I wanted to celebrate the Yuming-centric soundtrack³ to the movie by ranking the five songs featured in it. This isn’t about the track’s quality or place in the Yuming catalog, but rather how they work in the world of Ski Ni Tsuretette. My very scientific criteria for this list is as follows:

1 How does the song work in the context of the movie?

2 How “wintery” is the song?

3 How reflective of the Bubble era is it?

4 Does it make me, someone who hates winter sports, want to ski?

#5 “Lodge De Matsu Christmas”

Too easy to pick the last place song for this exercise, because most people won’t even notice that this Yuming song appears in the movie.

In its original form, “Lodge De Matsu Christmas” is a melancholy mood setter for her 1978’s Ryusenkei ‘80, where it works best as part of a larger work. Even by itself though, it’s a sweet stripped-down number showcasing her vocal versatility.

In the movie…it’s just an instrumental! Get out of here with that. The music by itself isn’t that strong — Yuming animates it — but going by the criteria I’ve imposed on my self, it almost flunks across all three. It soundtracks a Christmas party in a lodge, meaning the title of the song certainly works, but I don’t think the same ennui-coated mood comes through in the scene. Yet the real misses come in that it doesn’t capture the sound of winter (or Christmas for that matter), and it originally came out in 1978. Yuming hadn’t gone full diamond-encrusted yet, so this sounds like a relic nearly ten years later. Nobody is buying neon-purple ski jackets due to this.

#4 “Surf Tengoku, Ski Tengoku”

Ski Ni Tsuretette is not a film pretending to offer any subtlety, something the selection of this song as the main theme underlines. It was pegged as the marquee tune for the movie because it has the word “ski” in the title. That’s it.

It certainly left an impression in the years since — it’s the one used for that 2025 ad above — but tellingly “Surf Tengoku, Ski Tengoku” didn’t become the number most tied to it. That’s the next entry. This one’s a fun number from 1980’s Surf & Snow, but it’s not particularly wintery or Bubble-ish. Regarding the prior…I mean, it also has “surf” in the title, so it’s splitting the differences between seasons (she sings about the beach for god’s sakes! Honestly, this sounds better suited for a summer getaway).

Regarding the latter, it lacks the sheen that would define her work later on, with the synth touches sounding a little thin compared to what would come. There’s also…like a country-fried guitar solo in it? That’s one of the weirder details of Surf & Snow the album, which features multiple moments where she’s drawing from Nashville. Neat in her catalog, but not what I want to hear when watching some actors do dances while careening down a hill.

#3 “Koibito Ga Santa Claus”

Here’s the song that became most associated with Ski Ni Tsuretette. It plays over one of the more iconic “young adults goofing around on skis” montages of the movie, and appears to be a favorite of the YouTube set making “fan MVs” featuring footage of the film.

“Koibito Ga Santa Claus” is one of the cornerstones of Japanese Christmas music, with some arguing its popularity in the early ‘80s — aided by a Seiko Matsuda cover — helped turn the holiday from a kiddie event to one focused on couples. It’s a significant song in the pop cultural history of the country.

That’s why it falls a bit short in my ranking. While it sounds fine during its segment, it’s weird that a tune about Christmas⁴ gets so much attention in a movie where the holiday only appears briefly. It clears the wintery requirement, but always feels off as the representative song of the series. It’s also from Surf & Snow, so it lacks the middle-class sparkle of Yuming’s later cuts. Playing over a defining scene elevates it, but it should be more famous isolated than tied to this production.

#2 “A Happy New Year”

Ski Ni Tsuretette is mostly a lark — young adults enjoying the snow and conspicuous consumption while also going down the slalom that is love. Rarely does Baba move the film towards the dramatic, but when he does it delivers the best parts of the movie.

In some alternate cut, “A Happy New Year” takes us to the credits. It’s the number playing as the two central characters separately decide they need to be together on Dec. 31, abandoning their friends to drive out into the pitch black during a snowstorm to find one another⁵. It sets the scene perfectly — it’s an icy ballad, just piano notes and Matsutoya’s voice for most of it, like staring out a window into a white winter night. Guitars, percussion and strings come in later, but even then there’s chill running through it as she declares her love. While it’s too spacious to match the eventual maximalism of Bubble-era pop — and not getting me near ski boots — the way it reflects the season and how it works ahead of the big meeting between the protagonists elevates it on our scale.

Then the movie keeps going and becomes about delivering ski suits to a weird press event in the middle of Gifu. Though, oddly enough, it’s this scenario giving us…

#1 “Blizzard”

The other part in Ski Ni Tsuretette rising above the snowbound fun to offer something a touch more emotionally chilling is during its most desperate moment. Our male lead realizes the only way to save the big ski-brand party is to race through an off-limits pass as the sun sets. Our female protagonist, meanwhile, chases after him, hoping to help and make sure he’s OK as he navigates an extremely dangerous path. The pair are both in a chase, and it isn’t going well. “Blizzard” plays over, heightening it all.

I’m not actually factoring in overall quality to my Ski Ni Tsuretette scale, but I’ll note here that 1984’s “Blizzard” is among the best examples of Yuming marrying pop sensibilities with a flair for the dramatic during the heart of the ‘80s. Guitar-guided melodies and funky bass playing — check those sweet slaps — swirls with synthesized sounds, including some particularly busy synth, merging her past sound with the one she’ll follow moving forward. The instrumentation gives it human warmth, but the then-contemporary machine notes offer a theme-fitting coldness. Taken together, it’s tense but never dark, with brightness cutting through nature’s bite (those post-chorus horns).

Lyrically, Yuming leans into her songwriting strength of using metaphor, here crafting an extended one representing loyalty in love even in face of the uncertain. A great fit for the scene in question already…and even better since the metaphor used is skiing. Something that has become apparent to me while writing this — the reason Baba deemed Matsutoya essential to Ski Ni Tsuretette is almost certainly because he wrote large chunks of this movie as mini music videos of her wintery songs⁶. “Blizzard” gives it away, as the imagery Yuming presents in a song released three years before the movie arrives is largely replicated in the montage.

Nobody takes Ski Ni Tsuretette particularly seriously as a film — it’s a fun watch, almost certainly back then a delightful romp through ski resorts and today a silly but pleasant time capsule. I think that’s why the jolly “Koibito Ga Santa Claus” became the defining pop tune from the movie, as it matches its genuinely light mood.

“Blizzard,” though, checks everything. It arrives during the climatic finale, sounds as freezing as a pop song can get, and thanks to its sound captures the vibe of Japan’s Bubble era just right. When Japan Rail decided to use Ski Ni Tsuretette as a nostalgia play for its 2017 “JR SKISKI” campaign albeit with nods to snowboarding, they opted for the chills of “Blizzard,” and it has to be because of how well it suits the coldest months…and how hearing it makes even a summer guy like me want to give the bunny hill another go.

Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
Check out the Best Of 2025 Spotify Playlist here!

1. A potential knee-jerk read of the film is how it celebrates the slavish attitude towards one’s company and job in the Bubble era, with a worker going as far as to potentially freeze to death to deliver ski goods to an event. Yet I actually think it works better as a subtle critique of the system…our main character doesn’t actually work for the winter goods department of the mega-corp paying him, but rather some boring office drone. He dabbles in helping the sports side, much to the anger of his dull and ultimately vengeful coworkers, but it is in pursuing his passion where he feels most alive.

2. OK not all pretenses to write this are super thought out.

3. There’s also an actual score playing throughout too which has moments of interest too…it’s a good example of some soundtrack guy getting access to like, then-new drum machines and synths and going crazy…but dude had to go up against Yuming, bound to face plant.

4. Or like, hooking up with Santa.

5. I can not stress enough…so many decisions the characters make are like “do you want to die right now???”

6. The other clue for this theory is that she didn’t write any new songs for this…though that could have been a bonanza. I think that’s because she didn’t need to, seeing as Baba already had it mapped out using existing cuts.