A serious question (I mean that without any irony) regarding porn. Namely, Japanese lesbian porn that one might hypothetically be translating for class.

( Cut for...talking about lesbian porn. )

I am pretty excited about this Honey and Clover drama. I checked out the first episode and it was pretty fabulous. Takemoto is the guy who played Nakatsu in the Hana-kimi drama, which is A++ because from the first few episodes I approved of him there, and I love me some Takemoto. I'm not totally sold on Hagu, but I wasn't really sold on Hagu in the anime for a while. Morita I adored--he has these amazing coats that are like...bathrobes or something, and they're hot. Yamada also hasn't won me over yet, but she did try to kick Morita in the face, only to have him jump into Mayama's arms so she hit Takemoto instead, which is also amazing. So yeah. I am so far in favor of you, Honey and Clover drama. Way to be.

Shibata-sensei, noticing my Batman shirt: Oh, White-san, you like Batman?
Chash: Oh, um...kind of, yes!
Shibata-sensei: I don't know much about Batman. What kind of person is he?
Chash: Umm...he's a...very strict person.
Shibata-sensei: Strict?
Chash: Yeah, strict, and...not happy.
Shibata-sensei: Hm?
Toy-san, laughing at my pain: He's a lonely person.
Chash: Yeah, lonely!
Shibata-sensei: Oh...so you feel sorry for him?
[a break, while everyone who knows who Batman is laughs at this idea]
Chash: Well, that...I guess it depends! If it's the TV Batman or the movie Batman or the comics...
Shibata-sensei: Oh! Batman is a comic?
Chash: Yeah, an American comic. He's much happier in TV...
Shibata-sensei: So was he a comic first?
Chash: Yes, the comic came first, and then TV and movies and stuff.
Shibata-sensei: Hmm, is he like Superman? Superman is a good person who saves people. Does Batman save people?
Chash: He does!
Shibata-sensei: Oh, I see. So he's a good person?
Chash: Yes.
Toy-san, still laughing at my pain: Yes.
Chash: Actually, he's friends with Superman.
Everyone else at the table: Really?!
Chash: ...Yeah, in the comics. They team up a lot.
Shibata-sensei: Is that really true?
Toy-san: I guess so. White-san is obviously the expert.
Chash: orz.

Okay, so there is this song by Hysteric Blue that I got off fst a while ago, and I like it a lot, and I thought I'd try translating it. Unfortunately, the internet didn't actually have the lyrics, and I of course don't own the CD. So I figured, what the hell, the song is pretty easy to understand, I'll just try writing down the lyrics myself. Which is harder than you (read: I) would think! So what I'm going to share with you, the viewer at home who probably doesn't care, is my process of attempting to translate the song. FIRST we have the song itself, as I just wrote it down. There's a star next to one line—that's the one I'm least sure of, and I'm unsure of a lot of them! My first step will be basically reading through what I have here without any dictionary, using only my MacGuyver-like skills of kanji-taking-apart, and also my less MacGuyver-like skills of knowing some vocabulary already.

( tl;dr )

But who cares about all of that. JUST LISTEN TO THE SONG.

\o/

I really like it when I'm listening to a Japanese song, and I'm not paying that much attention, and then I zone in and realize I understand what it's about. This actually happens a lot. It's exciting. I should possibly be used to it by now, but I'm not really.

So for my Japanese final project, I'm looking closely at Japanese college students' blogs. Proving one and for all that campfuckudie is good for everything, one of the blogs I picked appears to be a girl (well, the writer uses 私 so I assume so...) who's a big Shonen Jump and Tales fan. So I'm trying to interpret her conversation about reserving the new Tales game (Tales of...god it honestly looks like Tales of Fandom vol. 2. inarticulate, help me out here?), and saw the following:

『あの！なんか"ティアver"と"ルークver"があるみたいんなんですけど…』

So I consider this. I can tell it's a version of some kind probably, and I'm thinking "god, do I know Tales characters?" And then I go "why yes I do. That's the one with Tear and Luke, right? God I'm awesome." Then I spent a while wondering if that one actually had Tir, but I decided that was probably Suikoden. I can't really tell them apart (shameful secret!). She also talks about recent Naruto developments a lot. She is a big Sasuke and Sakura (I think together?) fan. And I can even follow most of what she says about it. Thanks, campfuckudie!


eta
Ahaha this entry's about Phoenix Wright 4, best blogger ever.

maiteoida posted the other day about the conditional in Japanese, and at the time I was too tired to formulate a proper response. I'm still kind of too tired to do that, but I had one of my favorite songs, "Kaze ga fuku hi" stuck in my head today, and I thought I could make an example of it. I've never actually translated it before, and I like to translate songs I love, so I just stuck that in at the end.

( Conditionals, cut for those who don't care, but hey, correct me if I'm wrong. )

( A full translation of the song, which is lovely. Also feel free to correct. )

So hey. maiteoida. Did you see at dinner when O'Donnell-san took, like, six pieces of that pork and crammed it into one of the paper to-go cups? Because...I just don't even know what to say about that. Other than that I will never, ever, be as hardcore as he is, no matter how hard I try.

I guess it would help if I tried, but I know it will never work.

It's kind of sad that of all the kanji I know and can remember, the one I have best is still chigau, because of our inspired "ka line box nen thingy" mnemonic.