Life’s Good Translations

Woa, Shige are you sure you aren’t describing my free time days? Seriously! xD;; This boy is so cute- he always seems concerned about “polishing/improving” his personality but he already seems like a really great person. Though maybe sleeping before 7 am would help? Or maybe his friend’s shouldn’t call him to have a long conversation at 2 am… haha ♥

One page rough-ish translation from DUET magazine’s September 2007 edition.

Done in a few moments of free time, may sound rough in English. I apologize. Please comment with any questions or problems.

Under translation is a section with personal comments and translation notes, it might be helpful!

duet magazine september 2007

[little note thing on image]
10:00 Wake up
11:00 Train at gym
13:30 Return home, watch tv, eat
15:30 Study time
18:00 Fall asleep
-21:00 Waken up just in time to eat while watching PapaMusu
23:00 Play video game with dad
23:30 Bath, write report, play guitar
2:00 Talk on phone with friend
3:00 Write web diary
4:00 Can’t sleep so watch DVD
7:00 Sleep

[Morning] This day is the perfect off day! My drama will be on later, but in the morning it’s to the gym for training. Once I’ve sweat a lot I head home and find that my father, who thought for sure no one was home, is doing BILLY’S BOOT CAMP by himself. Not only that, but he can’t even do it…! My dog was just staring at my dad with a blank look on his face (lol).

[Afternoon] While I’m eating some cold Chinese noodles [note: tsukemen] that my father has made me, “Papa to Musume no Nanokakan” is being talked about on TV so I watch it. After that, it’s off to studying. Right now I have a friend who is studying English, so we watch movies without dubbing and then afterwards meet to talk about them. If seeing it one time we get it that’s great, but at worst sometimes I have to see it three times. Using your head like that, you’ll get really tired, so then I need a break which becomes laying down…

[Evening] “How long are you going to sleep! You need to shape up!” is what my mom will yell in a scary voice to wake me up. Somehow my
intention of taking a “short break” turned into me sleeping! I was dangerously close to missing the first airing of “Papa to Musume no Nanokakan”. THANK YOU, mom! “People will find faults in you so you better shape up~” I’m scolded while eating a late dinner and then enjoying the drama with my family. The parts I wasn’t in were the most interesting. My mom said “There weren’t any faults” with my work and I got a lot of mail from friends with their thoughts so I felt at ease about it afterwards. I’d like for even just a few more people to see it, it’s the best drama! Because he had a lot of energy, my dad challenged me to a video game tennis match. I thought he definitely would be really weak but he had mastered a bunch of special attacks and surprised me with how much he had advanced (lol). After eating and exercising, most of the things I had to do for the day have been done. Saa, shall I sleep… I think, but as I do my friend calls. We have a conversation for an hour, I write my Web diary and then at that point somehow my eyes won’t shut. So I watch the movie “Honey & Clover”. In order to study acting, I’ve come to watch a lot of movies. When I watch something I take notes by hand about it and have come to have about 30 books of these notes. I want to aim for 100 books by the end of the year. While thinking about this, with the dawn I fall into the dream world again…

★ Although recently I haven’t had a lot of free time with all the filming for the drama, I really want to see a lot of movies. The ones I’ve curious about are Akira Kurosawa and Kitano Takeshi’s movies. About the time duet will come out I’ll be 20 years old. I think I want to try, if just a little, absorbing a variety of things so from there I can polish my own personality.

Translation Notes
* PapaMusu = Papa to Musume no Nanokakan shortened
* Tsukemen, Chinese noodles eaten a lot like soba & soumen generally are (noodle and soup separate). Something I’ve wanted to try for awhile :3
* Billy’s Boot Camp is a weird set of exercise tapes/DVDs that help you work out. “Billy” is the teacher and he’s really hardcore at this stuff o___o Billy’s Boot Camp ‘fever’ swept Japan for awhile.
* “Thank you, mom!”, thank you is said “sankyuu” (”English”)
* Tennis video game… on the Wii? Perhaps, though it isn’t explicitly said. Also might be one of the Mario tennis games…
* Honey & Clover movie is a live action adaption of the popular manga & anime. Stars Sakurai Shou (of ARASHI). Review.
* Kitano Takeshi (BEAT) is a famous recent actor/director/variety-show-host. Kurosawa is probably the most famous Japanese director. There is a lot of information about them on the internet and I’m not a film expert so I’ll leave it at that

Personal Comments
Shige always has the most interesting things to talk about. Though they might be “normal, everyday” things somehow it’s always funny. The image of his dog staring blankly as his dad makes a fool of himself, Shige struggling to watch English movies, his friend calling at 2 am… it’s just all fun to hear about. When I first started watching drama and films (Japanese) without subtitles or dubbing it was pretty hard- I felt like I had to try and look up every word and my head would hurt if I watched for too long. And then I’d often go to sleep xD; So somehow I feel like I know exactly what Shige means… still- ganbatte on English, Shige! It’ll get easier with time.

Honey and Clover is my FAVORITE manga and anime ever. The live action movie also has a special place in my heart so I was excited to see Shige watched it. I wonder what kind of notes he took on it…?

Original scan found on Vendy’s blog