In a 1998 interview with the German online magazine Re.flexion, Alphaville lead signer Marian Gold explained: 'Big In Japan' tells about a couple of lovers trying to get off Heroin. They both imagine how great it would be to love without the drug: no steal, no clients, no ice age in the pupil, real emotions, true worlds. Till nowadays Berlin station Zoo is an important meeting place for junkies. That's why this place became a venue of the song. In 1977 I was quite regular in a club in Kreuzberg, the SO36. I hoped to meet David Bowie. There was the rumor he would be in Berlin for withdrawal treatment in that period. There was a fellow, who sold stuff of independent bands from US and UK. I bought the album of a British band named Big In Japan. "Big in Japan" meant so much as if you are nothing in your environs, you can be big somewhere else. You can be a king in another world. And if you aren't that, you can tell it at home. Japan is so far away. Anyway that statement fit perfectly to the story of the couple of lovers. So I used it for the refrain of the song.
In a 1998 interview with the German online magazine Re.flexion, Alphaville lead signer Marian Gold explained: 'Big In Japan' tells about a couple of lovers trying to get off Heroin. They both imagine how great it would be to love without the drug: no steal, no clients, no ice age in the pupil, real emotions, true worlds. Till nowadays Berlin station Zoo is an important meeting place for junkies. That's why this place became a venue of the song. In 1977 I was quite regular in a club in Kreuzberg, the SO36. I hoped to meet David Bowie. There was the rumor he would be in Berlin for withdrawal treatment in that period. There was a fellow, who sold stuff of independent bands from US and UK. I bought the album of a British band named Big In Japan. "Big in Japan" meant so much as if you are nothing in your environs, you can be big somewhere else. You can be a king in another world. And if you aren't that, you can tell it at home. Japan is so far away. Anyway that statement fit perfectly to the story of the couple of lovers. So I used it for the refrain of the song.