This journal serves the double purpose of being both a personal diary and a translation archive of sorts. I do a lot of translation as a hobby, and while everything I translate does end up on my website eventually, I thought it would be nice to have this as well. It will allow me to share new translations more rapidly, and also to have the interaction and feedback that were not quite possible through a website. Unless otherwise noted, my translations are edited by the fierce & fabulous mtembo.

... that said, translations will always be public!

• If you're only interested in the translations, feel free to simply watch this journal. Also, feel free to request translations, discuss the content of lyrics, ask me questions and anything else you might think of. :Db
  
• If you're interested in both the translations and my personal entries, simply comment to this entry and I will add you! I like food, music and shiny stuff, so I mostly post about that and whatever else catches my interest.
  
• In the rare instance where you would only be interested in my personal entries, well, um, I apologize for the trouble. :D; I do hope to post translations regularly, but I promise I won't be spamming your FL with 'em.

So I'll just say that I love the single, and get the translations rolling for now. Not much to say about those, except that Rakuen is insane (as in, "Is that Chinese?" kind of insane), so I just had fun with it. Please take it with a ginormous grain of salt.

( Freesia )

( Rakuen )

( Shuushifu )

Aaaand the remaining third of Gokusai:

( Gokusai )

( Nageki no Kane )

( Utagoe )

( Gekkou )

( Kinsenka )

The rest is here. I unfortunately couldn't translate G.M.C. because the lyrics are gross according to Miya and are therefore not available anywhere, but the consensus among the Japanese fanbase is that the chorus goes like this:

Psychedelic
Psychedelic
gokusai nageki no kane utagoe panorama ryuusei gekkou risky drive yasashii uta horizont kinsenka gerbera...

(Try it, it's hilarious.)

Filling out requests! D.O.G. is for shiva_rko, Kanaria is for Eduardo, and the others are for me me me. MILK is also up to date, for once. 8D; I might very well tackle Gokusai next, since everyone ever has been requesting translations off of it and it's pretty much almost done.

The last two songs are by folk songstress Morita Douji, who was active in the '70s and '80s, and greatly influenced numerous artists, including both MUCC and Guruguru Eigakan. Guruguru have actually covered her hit Boku-tachi no Shippai on their mini Ara, Carte, and MUCC have also covered it during a live performance (and I feel that it should definitely have been part of their Cover Parade, but that might be just me).

I would also like to state that Kare ga Shinda Hi has got to be one of MUCC's best songs of all time, and the lyrics are absolutely brilliant. Do yourself a favor and like, listen to it now. (And no, anything resembling a Kanye West reference was actually not on purpose.)

( D.O.G. )

( Kanaria )

( Kare ga Shinda Hi )

( Risky Drive )

( Boku-tachi no Shippai )

( Tatoeba Boku ga Shindara )

The following are for misterturtels, who requested "any Guruguru Eigakan translations". I started browsing through my albums and got perhaps a little too enthusiastic – but it was a real challenge and I enjoyed translating this bunch. I highly recommend them to anyone interested in the Taisho and Shouwa periods of Japan (1912-1926 and 1926-1989, respectively), or anyone who just wants an easy way to travel through time and space. Go ahead and post interpretations of the lyrics, I'd love to hear what you guys think!

(I have some more translations and requests coming up, but this seems enough to warrant a post of its own. Sorry about that!)

( Ame de Tobitatsu Otoko to Onna )

( Dada da )

( Fuyukare Hakusho )

( Haru no Shirosa ni Boku, Maketa. )

( Koikoron. Kimi ni wa Koron, Heya Muon. )

( Konpekisa ni Izanawareta Kodomo )

( Mikawa-wan Junjou Rhapsody )

( Nichiyoubi no Asa )

( Ohanashi no Ato no Uta )

( Shittakaburi no Nekokaburi )

( Soboku na Gimon )

( Sono Mama de Ii yo. )

( Sore ni Matsuwaru Ohanashi to Uta )

( Tsuki ni Itta Neko )

( Unabara ya )

( Yoru no Konpeki no Sei na no desu. )

I'd been planning on doing my mega-update on September 3rd (for no other reason than I'm a complete dork), but I'm a wee little behind. (The reason would be that my friend slept over at my place and snored so loudly that I basically had to wait until morning for my mom to go to work so that I could borrow her bed. :D; I then proceeded to pass out until 4PM). But we'll just pretend I'm on time and stuffs.

MILK CHOUDAI

Click iiit!!! Josh and I have been working on this since May, and I think everything is much much much better now. There's a lot of new stuff on it, too. New frame size, new drop-down menus, new about me pics, new sections, new translations. I'm not completely done proof-reading (well, proof-clicking) everything yet, so if you run into any mistakes, please tell me.

Anyway, to celebrate, I'm going to be an obnoxious twat and x-post my Zekuu album translation here too. 8Db

So, Zeks. That was a tough one. I don't think I've ever seen translations for the whole album, and I don't blame people. 1979 and Nagekidori to Doukebito were particularly hard, especially 1979 since the sentence subject is not mentioned even once in the lyrics. I browsed Japanese forums to try and get a clue, and even they had no idea, so have fun interpreting it however you want. XD, The others were pretty straightforward, I think. My favorites are Waga, Kugatsu Mikka and Kono Sen to Sora.

A few notes about some songs:

I think everyone knows that Miya wrote the lyrics of Bouzenjishitsu about Tatsurou. Rumor has it that the band almost broke up around the release of the album (2003), but I don't think they've ever been more precise than that. When asked about the lyrics of Bouzenjishitsu, Miya said that "while in the band, Tatsurou did something that's not really good as a person. The song is a kind of 'What the hell are you doing?' reaction to that". Tatsurou said that it was really hard for him to sing it, but since the lyrics are about him, he is the only who can sing it. The nice thing about it is that they re-recorded Aoki Haru (which appeared on the first press as a bonus song) for their BEST OF MUCC compilation, and added a few lines about how whatever happened between them around that time is a thing of the past.

September 3rd (as seen in Kugatsu Mikka no Kokuin) is the release date of Zekuu, and the band members say they've reached a perfect unity with this song. Waga and Kono Sen to Sora are about Miya's feelings towards the band and music in general (they form a nice evolution together – the loss and confusion of Waga are overcome in Kono Sen to Sora). Also, I know some people have heard that Ranchuu was written about Tatsurou's first sexual experience, but I don't think he's ever said so himself (although this interpretation does make a lot of sense, admittedly). :'D For this I get to post cute Ranchu fishie pictures:

I think that's pretty much it. Oh, you'll see some stanzas in pink. These are sung, but don't appear in the booklet, so I've marked them this way. 'Kay, I shut up now.

Edit: Shoot, I forgot to explain the title, of all things. Zekuu is written with the last two characters of 色即是空 (shikisokuzekuu), a Buddist idiom usually translated as "All is vanity" and referring to the fleetingness of the material world. I decided to translate the album title as "Vanity" for this reason, but when taken out of the context of the original idiom, the meaning of Zekuu can be interpreted in other ways. It's a compound word made of just so/this/right and sky/emptiness, so its meaning could extend to "complete sky" or "complete emptiness" (as seems to prove the album art, which features a painting of the sky).

( Bouzenjishitsu )

( Waga, Arubeki Basho )

( Shougyou Shisou Kyoujidai Koushikyoku )

( Hikanshugisha ga Warau )

( Shishite Katamari )

( Soushin no Koe )

( 1979 )

( Nagekidori to Doukebito )

( Kono Sen to Sora )

( Kugatsu Mikka no Kokuin )

( Ranchuu )

( Aoki Haru )

The last SPIN interview to feature a (non-Tatsurou) MUCC member! This time it's SATOCHI, and the theme is "teenage years". I have to admit that I was quite surprised by this interview – I was expecting the content to revolve mostly around boobs and surf or something, but some parts were actually really touching (surf is mentioned plenty of times, however, so I suppose I was at least partially correct).

I'm enjoying SPIN way too much. The ink of the cover has even started to bleed and I got my fingers all dirty while trying to translate. >_> Anyway, pretty much every interview is hilarious in its own right, so I definitely want to try and get some more done in the future. In the meantime, though, enjoy this one!

Dedicated to rivetspoon ♥ ( J. U. L. I. U. S. )

Another SPIN interview! This one amounts to a free tour into the mind of the average Japanese male. I still can't quite get over the fact that "type of girl/boy" seems to refer almost exclusively to physical features over there. Also, the whole browsing magazines and telling your friends whom you find attractive appears to be an actual activity in Japan. >_>; God, this country still kills me.

Anyway, it's Tatsurou and Yukke, and they talk about girls. Do I need to say more?

( ''I really liked her, so I kept lifting up her skirt.'' )

My first completed interview translation! I'm really proud of that one – it makes me realize just how far I've gone.

It's taken from SPIN, that collection of Neo Genesis interviews featuring Tatsurou. The ones with the MUCC members were never published in the magazine, though. The theme for this interview is Ibaraki, MUCC's hometown. Tatsurou and Miya talk about Ibaraki's features, the differences between it and Tokyo, how it changed between when they were kids and now, and they also touch the topic of family. It's really interesting and cute, so I highly recommend it. :Db

(Also, yes, MUCC does contribute to tourism in Ibaraki. *ahem* And yes, what Tatsurou says about going inside the Ushiku Daibutsu is totally true. I'm actually relieved natives think the same. :D; And I'm craving natto now, gyah.)

( Natto, rice fields and leeches )

So, um, for those who have been watching this since day 1, here's the deal: I'm going to use this as both my personal and translation journal from now on, which means that the weekly?-biweekly?-hopefully-at-least-monthly translation post will end up on your FL. I hope it's not too much of an inconvenience. :( This is also the reason why the name changed all of a sudden – I figured it would be less confusing for everyone if I had a username similar to that of my website.

Anyway, let's get things started! And what's better than cali≠gari for the occasion? I managed to get these translations done a few weeks back – I basically spent a whole night working on those after I received my copy of cali≠gari no sekai (and proceeded to have rather unsettling dreams afterwards). As is now usual, they were edited by Josh (mtembo). MUCC have covered Sentimental on their Cover Parade, so the MUCCers out there will want to check that one out. That said, enjoy! And proceed at your own risk. ;D

( Erotopia )

( Hakkyou Channel )

( Maguro )

( 37564. )

( Outo )

( Sentimental )

( Tadaima )