Midaregami

I think there’s some kind of virally-transmitted Aquired Translation Obsession Syndrome (ATOS) that uses electronic dictionaries as its vector, because now that I have a dictionary, I have this obsession with looking things up in it. So I bought the “Sakura” single by Naotarou Morimoto, and translated it.

Maeva and I are going to do a duet of this song at our Sayonara Karaoke party. It’s going to be one of those Moments, you see.

I’ll follow up with an MP3 shortly.

More from Volume One in this series of despair, these dealing mostly with love triangles. Apparently, “I Miss You” isn’t actually a collection of amateur poetry—the verses don’t follow any of the myriad Japanese poetic traditions—but rather short messages to a person you’re no longer with.

I say, if it’s got line breaks in weird places, it’s poetry.

My dictionary informs me that today, a Japanese person first reached the peak of Mount Everest. It informs you of the following bleak poetry, in honor of my continuing heartache.

Still more translations of bleak, joyless poetry. Me? Oh, my chest has hurt more or less constantly for the past 24 hours. These days, things, they are not so good.

Miwa, 24, a housewife, writes:

結婚はね、

やっぱりいちばん好きな人とは

できませんでした。

Yeah, marriage…

It really should be to the one you love most.

Mine wasn’t.

Some more poetry from “I Miss You.” This one’s by Aika, 19, a student.

もう大丈夫かと思って、

あの曲を聴いた。

まだだめみたい。

I thought maybe it’d be okay by now,

so I played that song again.

Still no good.

Here’s a really scary, terse, bitter one from “Dolphinring,” 19, a part-timer.

もういいでしょ？　早くわたしの中から出てってよ。

Are you done? Good, now get out of me.

Another short one—nicer—from Tsukada, 19.

今日もあなたの姿を探しに、街に出る。

Today, again, looking for you, I head out into the city.

I bought a book of freeform pseudo-love poetry written by bored OLs and starry-eyed high school girls, chiefly because it’s easy to translate. It’s mostly bad, but I’m a sucker for this stuff. It’s nice, also, to get that Bright Eyes-style reminder that there are people out there as broken as me.

受話器ごしに

「コンビニ行ってくる」「じゃあね」

あれから二年。

あなたのコンビニ、ずいぶん遠いね。

Over the answering machine

“I’m heading to the 7-11.” “See you.”

Two years later

your 7-11 is a ways away, isn’t it?

Sometimes this stuff catches you off guard. I was listening to Spitz’s “Hotaru,” (“Firefly”) and it the opening chorus just moved me, literally, to tears. Yes, I cried on the bus home. Let’s figure out why. (Japanese characters follow.)