Per Wiktionary, the etymology of this micro-mini-album's title comes "From the idea that in the middle of the night, a half-asleep person might get confused and enter the wrong room". A description that's just as fitting of this entire piece of art.
Released on the Spring of 1984, this is the group's only known output. 3F=C themselves are Noriko & Sumiko, vocalist & drummer of Kya→, a central band to the gal punk scene that was flourishing at the time. The label—independently-run R.B.F (Rebel Beat/Brain Factory) Records—was created by singer Shigeki Nishimura (who also produced this one) to release the recordings of his own punk band The Loods. Despite the doubly hard pedigree, this is in fact laid back new wave played on just bass and guitar.
My gateway to this record was its engineer and sound advisor, Susumu Hirasawa. Although his style never went entirely punk, the guy was deeply committed to the mindset of the movement. The early-mid '80s in particular saw him the closest to being a part of the scene, associating with a number of artists from both Tokyo and Kansai. Noriko, Sumiko & Nishimura were big Hirasawa fans and had close friendships with the guy at the time. And his commitment to the logistics of making To-Ma-Do-I happen were significant: P-Model manager Mitsuru Hirose is credited as vocal advisor, while the recording location was Model Studio (a room in the office of a friend's film/TV production company where his private studio was set up, in Akasaka).
Unfortunately; any info on how/why this group was formed, ended, or if it did anything beyond this sole release; has been impossible to come by. Despite how much it shaped his artistic approach, and how his work with Nishimura in particular helped shape one of his most popular creative phases, Hirasawa's closeness to the punk sound was short-lived, and his fans have a general disinterest/apathy towards this part of his career. The go-to reference/history book on him only gives To-Ma-Do-I a 5 sentence blurb—most of which is just relaying basic discography info—in a wider spread of brief descriptions covering his production work.
If I ever go to Japan someday, I'll likely spend 90% of the trip poring through the stock of used bookstores. I've long relied on just whatever resources made their way online. Hirasawa fandom is an outlier in that sense: plenty of his fans have shared much of their personal libraries on the internet. On the flip-side, I'm empty-handed when it comes to the history of Kya→, and have no idea where to start looking, or if there are even any such avenues online. Much of Japanese independent music is driven by the live house ecosystem, so whatever remains is mostly in the hand of middle-aged people who were there when everything went down.
I feel lucky that somebody recently shared more photos of the physical artifact beyond the cover, and found out it was pressed in red vinyl with a photo of monkeys wearing sunglasses as the label. The lyrics are here if you want to understand what these at best barely over a minute long songs are about, all of them very easy to understand.
Its been a long-term frustration of mine that 3F=C has been a dead end, both on research and overall artistry. This is an immediately charming piece of art, and I wish there was more of it.