Rewriting Songs from Around the World in Japanese: Yukan Omura's Story of Piecing Himself Back Together Through Different Languages

Some people grow by moving forward in a straight line.

Others grow by starting over, again and again.

Re-adapting to a new place, getting used to a new language, getting to know new people — even re-learning who you are. Just as one life starts to feel familiar, the next departure begins.

For most people, "Where are you from?" is an easy question.

But for Yukan (Yukan Omura), it was a question that troubled him for a long time.

He grew up moving between different places. Every move felt like taking apart the self he had just pieced together, and assembling it all over again. A new place, a new language, new relationships, a new way of living — everything had to start from zero.

Over time, he realised he couldn't answer "Where are you from?" as naturally as everyone else.

Because his answer was never just one place.

Some people aren't rootless — their roots simply grow in many places

Yukan's whole upbringing was movement.

Different cultures, different languages, different environments kept rotating through his life. Each time he moved somewhere new, he had to start again — adapting to a new way of life, fitting himself into a new world.

On the surface, it looks like freedom.

But only those who are always moving know: when you spend long enough adapting to new places, even your original self begins to blur.

Because when a person is always on the road, sooner or later they start asking: where do I actually belong?

He admits he was lost over this for a while. The people around him all seemed to know their answer so naturally — but his answer was never just one place.

It was only later that he slowly came to accept it: maybe some people were never meant to be fixed to a single place. Some lives are simply pieced together from many places.

Interestingly, when asked about the most vivid taste of his childhood, Yukan barely hesitated: "Jianbing — a traditional Chinese savory street crepe."

It was something he ate almost every day as a child. To this day, that taste still lives in his memory.

Some people remember a place for its scenery; some remember it for its people. But sometimes, what truly stays behind is a taste.

Perhaps for Yukan, growing up was never about losing those places — it was about keeping them, piece by piece, inside himself.

And what stayed with him wasn't just memory. It was different languages, different cultures, even different ways of understanding emotion. Perhaps that's why, when he later started making music, his approach turned out unlike anyone else's.

He isn't translating other people's songs — he's re-understanding other people's emotions

Yukan has always made music in his own particular way. He is best known for rewriting songs from around the world into Japanese. Many people see it as mere covering — but to him, it's closer to re-creation.

Before every project, he first works to understand what the original song is truly trying to say, then rewrites it into another language in his own way.

Not word-for-word translation, but re-feeling, re-digesting, and saying it anew.

This habit mirrors his life. He has always been understanding people from different places, understanding the emotions embedded in different cultures, and reshaping them into something he can carry.

He isn't borrowing other people's songs. Within those songs, little by little, he is understanding himself.

And that understanding, for him, has everything to do with language itself.

Every language carries a different kind of emotion

To Yukan, songs in different languages were never just different on the surface.

The difference lies in their emotional architecture.

Chinese-language songs, he says, tend to be more poetic and layered — a single lyric often hides far more than its literal words. Filipino songs, by contrast, are more direct and candid, singing out the deepest feelings exactly as they are.

This is why he has always found rewriting songs so fascinating. Every rewrite is like building a bridge between two emotional worlds. It's not simply converting one language into another — it's making sure the original feeling still holds true inside another culture.

It isn't easy. Because emotion is never something you can copy directly. It has to be understood, and it has to be felt all over again. Perhaps because his own life has constantly moved back and forth between cultures, Yukan is more practised than most at understanding difference.

And his music, in a way, has become the bridge between those differences.

Some songs sing the feelings you never managed to say

One song that struck him especially deeply is "Taiyou to Chikyuu" ("The Sun and the Earth").

What makes it special isn't only the melody — it's the sense of distance in the song, which resonated with him profoundly.

For years, he has lived in different places. Many relationships, as a result, slowly turned long-distance. Some people are still there, yet impossible to truly reach. Some feelings don't disappear — they are simply pulled apart, inch by inch, by distance.

So whenever he hears those lyrics, he thinks of the relationships he has lived through. Perhaps that's exactly why he believes:

Some songs don't move you because you understand the language.

They move you because they happen to say the feelings you couldn't say yourself.

For Yukan, many songs matter not just because they sound beautiful, but because at certain stages of life, they happen to catch you when you fall.

"Taiyou to Chikyuu" was one of those songs. So was "Leaves."

After a breakup, he hid inside a closet and recorded a song

Some songs can only truly be understood in a person's quietest moments.

Yukan remembers being alone in Japan, just after a relationship had ended.

He knew leaving was the right thing to do — but some feelings don't fade just because you know you made the right call. The words left unsaid, the regrets still sitting in his chest, the emotions that had ended on paper but hadn't really let him go — they were all still there. During that time, he often processed everything alone.

Eventually, he hid inside the closet of his home and recorded a Japanese version of Ben&Ben's "Leaves." It wasn't a studio session, nor any official project. He simply tucked himself into the smallest, quietest space he could find, and tried to sort himself out.

There's a line in the song:

"Leaves will soon grow from the bareness of trees, and all will be alright in time."

That line landed exactly where he needed it most. That song, he says, carried him through that period — and reminded him: just because things are hard now doesn't mean they always will be.

Some things don't need to be let go of right away. But time, slowly, will change them. That recording was less a cover than the first time he truly stopped and faced himself.

When his first piece reached 6.6 million people, he realised the world really does answer back

At first, Yukan never imagined his work would be heard by so many. He was simply curious — what would songs from other places sound like in Japanese?

Then his first piece, uploaded to TikTok, hit 6.6 million views within a week.

Something that had been deeply private — just him and his music — was suddenly heard by countless strangers. More surprising still: emotions that had once belonged only to him were now understood by so many others.

That was the moment he realised some feelings, even in another language, can still be understood. For someone who had spent his whole life moving between places, being understood mattered enormously.

Because it meant he hadn't been going through all of it alone.

Those feelings he thought were entirely his own might be accompanying others through their own moments. And it was through these works that new connections began to enter his life.

The most important of them all: Fumiya.

fuyu — the first time he didn't have to walk alone

Today, Yukan is one half of the music duo fuyu.

Many people discovered them through covers, but to him, fuyu was never just about covers. It was the first time he truly created a sound of his own together with another person.

In the beginning, he was producing songs for Fumiya. It was Fumiya who later suggested he rewrite Filipino songs into Japanese — and that suggestion opened the path he walks today.

Speaking of Fumiya, Yukan says he's a lot like Luffy from ONE PIECE — full of drive, acting on ideas the moment they appear. If Fumiya is Luffy, then he's probably Chopper. Not because of any particular resemblance, but because of that feeling of always moving forward side by side.

Over the years, he had grown used to moving, and used to leaving. Used to relationships beginning, and used to them ending at some point. Some people only pass through briefly; some places are only brief stops.

So for Yukan, meeting someone genuinely willing to walk forward together is not something that comes easily. But fuyu is different.

It's a relationship where someone walks alongside him — not a brief stop, but truly moving forward together. When asked what he would say to Fumiya, Yukan was blunt:

"Honestly, I've never thought of you as a particularly great singer."

It sounds harsh — but the next line is even more honest.

"But without you, there would be no fuyu. Your passion, your vision, and your personality made all of this possible."

The relationships that truly matter are rarely built on perfection. Most of the time, they're built on honesty.

Becoming the protagonist of your life isn't about finding answers

Today, Yukan is still writing songs, and still slowly coming to understand himself.

Beyond covers, he has also started writing his own songs. For him, covers let him step into other people's stories, while original songs let him truly sort through his own emotions for the first time.

One unreleased song, "Why Did You Love Me," is about a relationship that has already ended. He didn't rush to explain those unanswered questions to himself; instead, he wrote them into the song. Because for him, music has always been a way of understanding himself.

He used to keep wondering where he belonged. Only later did he slowly realise that all the places he had passed through, the people he had met, and the songs he had sung were never leading him to an answer. They were quietly piecing together the person he is now.

Maybe some people's lives were never meant to have only one sense of belonging, nor a single right answer. Becoming the protagonist of your life isn't always about finally finding the answer. It's about the day you're willing to stop, see clearly who you are now, and accept:

That the person you already are is enough.