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Will listening to Japan’s biggest earworm song for five hours drive you insane? Let’s find out!

Our ace reporter Mr. Sato subjects himself to five hours of the Don Quijote theme song.

The Japanese music scene moves pretty quickly. With the pop music industry having long focused on youthful images and single sales, there’s always a fresh face or brand-new tune taking center stage in the public consciousness.

And yet, for more than 20 years, at any given time a significant portion of Japan has the same song stuck in their head. That song is “Miracle Shopping,” and SoraNews24 takes no responsibility should you, after clicking on the video of it below, have it stuck in your head too.

Even if you don’t speak Japanese, you no doubt caught singer Maimi Tanaka repeatedly belting out “Don don don, donki!” over and over again. That’s because “Miracle Shopping” is the theme song of Japanese discount retailer Don Quijote, more commonly called “Donki” for short by shoppers in Japan. “Miracle Shopping” was written and composed by Tanaka, who used to be a part-timer at the chain’s first branch in Tokyo’s Fuchu neighborhood, and since 1999 it’s been playing in a close-to-constant loop inside Don Quijote’s stores.

With its catchy rhythm, brassy pep, and instantly memorized lyrical hook, “Miracle Shopping” quickly burrows into your brain’s inner soundtrack, and quite often stays there for a while after leaving the store. So if it’s playing in heavy rotation inside so many people’s minds, what would happen to your mind if you actually listened to “Miracle Shopping” for five and a half hours?

Hahaha, you’d have to pretty crazy to try that, right?

Oh, hi, Mr, Sato.

Yes, our ace reporter Mr. Sato volunteered for this experiment, and not just because he’s the head of SoraNews24’s unofficial Department of Potentially Bad Ideas. See, despite his energetic antics in pursuit of professional excellence, Mr. Sato, by his own description, actually has a tendency towards quiet negativity when left to stew in his own thoughts. Would listening to “Miracle Shopping” all day long replace his stressful solitary worrying with boundless, bursting positive energy? Let’s find out!

▼ “Don don don, donki♪ Don Qui-jo-te♪”

Editor’s note: Sharp-eyed linguists might notice that while the song’s lyrics are “don don don,” Mr. Sato accidentally added the Japanese text for “do” (ド) instead of “don” (ドン) to his photos. We decided not to make him go back and fix that, since, as we’ll see, it would have taken the poor guy a very, very long time.

Conveniently, “Miracle Shopping” is available on Apple Music, so Mr. Sato could play it through his phone while he was spending the day working from home, with the music coming through the device’s speaker while he wrote articles…

▼ “Don don don, donki♪ Don Qui-jo-te♪”

…did laundry…

▼ “Don don don, donki♪ Don Qui-jo-te♪”

…and made coffee.

▼ “Don don don, donki♪ Don Qui-jo-te♪”

Even when he stepped out in the middle of the day to pick up lunch and run some errands, he kept the music going through his earphones.

▼ “Don don don, donki♪ Don Qui-jo-te♪”

Aside from when he was using his apartment’s bathroom (since he’s got no place there to set his phone down), Mr. Sato gave himself no breaks from the incessantly cheerful “Miracle Shopping,” and though Tanaka also sings about searching through Don Quijote’s extensive and eclectic inventory to find treasures and bargains, nothing matches the sheer volume of “Don don don, donki♪ Don Qui-jo-te♪”

▼ “Don don don, donki♪ Don Qui-jo-te♪”

▼ “Don don don, donki♪ Don Qui-jo-te♪”

▼ “Don don don, donki♪ Don Qui-jo-te♪”

As the music played and played, Mr. Sato began to feel as though his stray thoughts of potential problems, forecasted failures, and other half-formed, less-than-inevitable negative scenarios were being overwritten with…

▼ “Don don don, donki♪ Don Qui-jo-te♪ Don don don, donki♪ Don Qui-jo-te♪ Don don don, donki♪ Don Qui-jo-te♪ Don don don, donki♪ Don Qui-jo-te♪ Don don don, donki♪ Don Qui-jo-te♪ Don don don, donki♪ Don Qui-jo-te♪ Don don don, donki♪ Don Qui-jo-te♪”

So after Mr. Sato dutifully listened to “Miracle Shopping” on repeat for five and a half hours. did he come out on the other side with a super-charged smiling positivity?

Not exactly. In fact, he feels like he can sum up his mental state with a single kanji character: 無 (mu), meaning “emptiness.”

Understand, though, that this isn’t a complaint. Mr. Sato’s marathon “Miracle Shopping” session hadn’t left him feeling broken, hollow, or emotionally expired. Mu is actually the desired state of those who practice Zen meditation, where the goal isn’t to fixate on a specific concept, but rather to remove distractions coming from both external and internal sources, eliminating mental noise and calming the mind.

▼ “Don don don, donki♪ Don Qui-jo-te♪”

Consumed in extreme quantities, the cheerfulness of “Miracle Shopping” acted as a counter to Mr. Sato’s ordinary gloominess, and their opposing forces cancelled each other out.

▼ “Don don don, donki♪ Don Qui-jo-te♪”

With repeated exposure, the song functioned like a sort of psychological white noise, allowing him to write and perform his other work tasks smoothly and with unclouded clarity of thought.

▼ We’re not sure if that’s exactly what we’d call a smile, but we definitely wouldn’t call it a frown.

Really Mr. Sato’s only regret is that he calculates that he listened to the 3-minute, 39-second-long “Miracle Shopping” about 90 times in a row for this experiment, so now he’s wishing he’d have kept going and done an even 100. We think we’ll ask him to wait until his next work-from-home day to try that, though, rather than performing his follow-up experiment in the office where we all have to share in the soundtrack.

Related: “Miracle Shopping” on Apple Music
Photos ©SoraNews24
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[ Read in Japanese ]

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