edited from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_Kawashima wrote:Kawashima was born and raised in Fukuoka, Japan. After her birth, her mother's health deteriorated and she died when Kawashima was only 3 years old. Because her father had been missing before she was born, she was taken to an orphanage and eventually adopted by the Kawashima family, owners of a construction company. Her foster father died when she was 10. After graduating from middle school, she moved to Tokyo. Her foster mother died when she was 16. She started playing the piano at the age of 3 and eventually began to think about a career as a singer.
Kawashima started her career as an enka singer. At around the age of 10, she performed on stage at the Carnegie Hall in New York. In 1999, she released her debut single, Juu-roku Koi Gokoro / Anata ni Kataomoi. However, the enka project was crippled by poor sales and was abandoned entirely within a few months.
After this initial failure, she began to sing her own songs on the busy street corners in Shibuya, Tokyo with a microphone and a radio cassette player. To become famous, she set herself the goal of performing 1,000 times on the street. Nobody paid attention to her songs at first, but the crowd gradually grew as she kept performing on streets and she met people who gave her support, culminating her major debut and the 2003 hit single "Asueno tobira" (Door to Tomorrow), which sold more than 900,000 copies. She sang the song as the vocalist of the duo I Wish. She has been performing solo since the duo broke up in 2005. Her second solo single, "12-ko no Kisetsu" (12 Seasons) ranked 10th on the Billboard Hits of the world, Japan. Even after her major debut, she kept performing on streets and, in 2005, she accomplished 1,000 street performances, which, according to Kawashima, became the foundation of her music.
Kawashima has devoted her time and money to a project to build schools in developing countries. 3 schools have been finished so far and her goal is to build 100 schools.
Every year since her mother's death, she has held a memorial concert on August 20.
by Moh » Wed Feb 25, 2015 2:26 pm 
The title track is alright, too.
They are probably the most problematic TV station in Japan at the moment.
