Translation of Bonnou no Blues

Original Japanese | Romanji Reading | English Translation | Translation Annotations

I’m probably going to be accused of as lazy since it’s been two weeks since I last translated a song, and this one is only one minute long. Yeah? So? I’ve been working on studying for my JLPT II, which also means I have been working on my blog, JLPT Blues.

In any case, enjoy this video of the song as a means of making amends!

The tatami in that room makes very happy for no reason at all. Also, got to love those toothy grins at the end!

煩悩のブルーズ
モンゴル８００
ディニエル

ときめく花弁は　一夜限りの夢
手招く甘い　蜜の香りに誘われて

愛は陽炎　ゆらゆら揺れる
恋は翔らう　瞬きもせず
十六夜の月も笑ってる

迷いなさい　苦しみなさい
千切れるほど　悩めなさい
繰り返す　煩悩のブルーズ

僕といつまでも
君といつまでも

煩悩のブルーズ

Bonnou no BURUUZU
MONGORU Happyaku
Deinieru

Tokimeku hanabira Ichiya kagiri no yume
Temaneku amai Mitsu no kaori ni sasowarete

Ai ha kagerou Yurayura yureru
Koi ha kakerau Matatakimosezu
Hizayoi no tsuki waratteiru

Mayoinasai Kurushiminasai
Chigireru hodo Nayamenasai
Kurikaesu Bonnou no BURUUZU

Boku to itsumademo
Kimi to itsumademo

Bonnou no BURUUZU

The Wordly Desires Blues
MONGOL800
Daniel

Within one night, I dreamt of fluttering petals
It has this beckoning smell of honey that invited me

Love is a heatwave, and it ripple sluggishly (1)
Romance soars without even blinking
A sixteen day old moon is laughing.

Get lost (3), be bitter,
Worry so much you tear it into a thousand pieces
It keeps on repeating, this Worldly Desires (Klesha) blues(2)

Always with me,
Always with you

This Wordly Desires Blues

Translation Annotations:

1. 1.     Yureru usually mans to sway, but I think in this case, it supposed to describe the waves of heat one see on a hot day, so I thought ripple was better.
2. 2.     Bonnou is a Buddhist word that translates as Klesha. I’m no expert on Buddhism, so this is going to be rather simple. It means the worldly desires, and affliction. It’s not something you want to have if you want to reach enlightenment, essentially.

More from ETC Works 2

I'm not really sure why I didn't notice before, but MONGOL800 do a cover of the famous Nadasousou!

If you're curious, here is the original, sung by Rimi Natsukawa.

She is a famous Okinawan singer who I absolutely love. It is one of my many regrets not picking up one of her albums while I lived in Japan. If you're curious about her stuff, which is largely more traditional than Nadasousou, I went to the trouble of making you a short playlist of my favorites here.

This is MONGOL800's cover of the song, and as you can tell, they changed it pretty significantly.



Who are The Majestics that MONGOL800 are playing with? I have yet to find out. All I know is that I'm relatively sure it's not these guys.

Covering the Boom

On ETC Works 2, Monpachi covers a song by The BOOM, but it's not the one you would expect. That song, of course, is the song that was inspired by Okinawa, Shima Uta:



It's a beautiful song, right? It's also the reason why people think The BOOM is from Okinawa, though their hometown is actually in Yamanashi Prefecture. So, it's interesting to me that Monpachi would cover a song by a non-Okinawan band that has done Okinawanesque music, but choose a song completely unrelated to the styles they have been getting into (which is infusing traditional Okinawan music into their punk).

What is even more interesting is that the original song sounds like this:



Is that ska/reggae I hear in there? Isn't that what almost the entirety of ETC Works is? But why, then, does it sound like vaguely Okinawa country when Monpachi covers it?

(Unfortunately, I do have a youtube video of the song. May have to rectify that myself in the near future.)

It's just too fascinating for words!

Chiisana Koi no Uta Round-up

This is going to be rather random post about Chiisana Koi no Uta.

1. I found some tabs for Chiisana Koi No Uta at http://lawi-chan.livejournal.com/36084.html

2. Someone uploaded the cut of Chiisana Koi no Uta from the Daniel DVD. I used to watch that DVD every morning before I went to work! Its so natsukashii!

3. I found a cover of the song by Yurika Ooyama, though I don't really care for it. It seems to lack a lot the emotional purity of MONGOL800, but that could just be me being hardheaded about new things.


Yurika Ooyama - Chiisana Koi no Uta by audrey707

Daimeiwaku

I thought this video was lost forever to the internets! Thank goodness that no one ever watches Dailymotion, or it may have been. No one checks dailymotion for copyright infringement, it seems!

MONGOL800 - 大迷惑 feat.奥田民生(our music) by ASHIKASAN

This is a cover of the very famous song by UNICORN, Daimeiwaku. In fact, this cover was my gateway drug to another one of my favorite singers, Okuda Tamio (the lead singer for UNICORN). You can actually see him playing the second guitar in the red hat on Kiyosaku's left.

Minamikaze to Taiyou Translation

Original Lyrics | Romanji Reading | Translation | Annotations

I'm about... a year or soo late on this, but I figure I should translate it anyway seeing as no one else has yet. Especially when it's about one of my favorite Disney movies.

There are two things to be noted before I start the translation though:

1. Stitch is an anime version of the Disney movie, and it seems to be an alternate reality. Instead of landing in Hawaii, Stitch lands on a fictional island in Okinawa. There he meets Yuna, and finds a stone that could make him the most powerful creature in the universe provided he do enough good deeds. The series follows him doing good deeds. I think. I haven't really watched much of it, in any case.

If you're wondering why they decided to make an anime out of it, I do have a theory. When I arrived in Japan, Stitch was hugely popular. You saw him on key rings, pencils, blankets, clothing.... basically, everything! But the thing is, nobody saw the movie Lilo and Stitch. They basically just thought he was a character, which is not really all that uncommon in Japanese society. Hello Kitty, for example, was just a character created to sell. It wasn't until after she was used as a marketing tool (on everything!) that she was made into a television series which was used as a vehicle to create more characters and increase profits. I'm thinking that Disney saw that since the original movie was fairly unknown to the Japanese, that it would make an anime marketed to Japanese people to further hype the character Stitch to make more money.

2. The song "South wind and Sun" has an interesting title. Why? Because there is poem by James Whitcomb Riley by the same name. Riley, of course, is infamous author of the poem "Little Orphant Annie" that spawned a media treasure trove. Though the poem and the song seem to be unrelated, I find it far too interesting not to share!

And now, I'll stop jabbering on and on! On to the lyrics!


南風と太陽
モンゴル８００
スチッチ

ここホレホレ　ここもホレ
こころに　オハナ　咲かせましょう

太陽と南風と
おでかけですか？

燦々降り注ぐ
Sunshine ティダの光
颯爽と吹き抜ける

South wind 南の風


Minamikaze to taiyou
Mongoru Happyaku
Stitch Soundtrack

Koko HOREHORE Kokomo HORE
Kokoro ni OHANA Sakasemashou

Taiyou to minamikaze to
Odekakedesuka?

Sansan furisosogu
Sunshine TEIDA no hikari
Sassou to fukinukeru

South wind Minami no Kaze

The South Wind and the Sun
MONGOL800
Stitch Soundtrack

Hooray (1) for here, and hooray for here too!
Let’s allow family (2) to bloom in our hearts

Are you going with south wind and the sun?

Its brightness will rain down (3)
Sunshine is the rays of the sun (4)
And they nobly blow through

South wind, the south wind (5)


ANNOTATIONS:

1. Okay, I actually don’t know what the “hore” here means, though I’m reasonably sure that it’s one of the nonsense exclamations that are made during Japanese traditional songs, and enka. They tend to mean encouragement, praise and enjoyment, so I just decided to translate it as “hooray”. It could very well be wrong.

2. I love how clever Kiyosaku is with words. “Ohana”, if you’ve seen Lilo and Stitch, is explained as being family. “Ohana”, however, in Japanese, is the word for flower. So, it’s really quite ingenious that he uses the verb “to bloom” here :)

3. No note here. It’s just cool that he’s using a rain metaphor to describe the sun.

4. He says sunshine in English here, and then uses the Okinawan word for the sun (“teida”) so I had to try and mix it up a bit.

5. Here, he sings the same thing in English as he does in Japanese, hence its repetitiveness.