Elaby's LiveJournal - 57 Academics

The ever-so-awesome-and-wonderful rubymulligan visited Japan recently, and as she knows I go all shiny-eyed at the prospect, she agreed to take along some of my spending money and pick up souvenirs for me. AND SHE FOUND SO MANY SPLENDID THINGS *TEARS OF JOY* It could not have arrived at a better time. I was so, so happy to open it. There was much squealing and handwaving of glee!

First and foremost - SHE FOUND ALL THE MIKU THIIIIIIINGS!


The little figurine is of Miku and Shumai-kun, who appears to be... a dumpling? A cloud-dumpling hybrid? I don't know, but he's cute XD And Miku is ADORABLE. The calendar is full of pictures of Nendoroid figurines, including several Mikus AND MADOKA AND HOMURA OMG. Rhi included several advertisements and flyers with Miku on them, and I just love them. I want all the Nendoroid figurines XD

THAT PACKAGE CONTAINS MIKU CANDY, BY THE WAY <3 <3 <3 I haven't brought myself to open it yet, because the picture on the package is so pretty, but I love gummy candy so I won't be able to hold off for long XD In this picture is also a Meiko pin (Meiko!!!), a teeny adorable collectable plate (perfectly sized for BJDs!), a little Rilakkuma bento box keychain (SO CUTE), and a bunny needle-felting kit <3 Miku had to be in the picture too!


I had to turn the calendar page to show you Madoka and Homura <3 Rhi sent me so many cool snacks! Green tea and sakura Kit Kat bars, a strawberry cheesecake Kit Kat bar, a honey Kit Kat bar, and a rum raisin Kit Kat bar (OMG RHI, HAVE YOU SEEN YURU YURI? It's a ridiculously cute anime full of girls dating and my favorite character is obsessed with rum raisin ice cream, and if you didn't know that you are surely psychic! <3) Also, petite donuts! XD Those I ate. They were VERY yummy :3 I saved the socks for last - My Melody rainbow socks! They couldn't be more perfect!


Aaaaaaaaaaah, I'm SO LUCKY <3 Thank you, Rhi! <3 <3 <3

After a full day of volunteer yard work, I'm exhausted. Sure beats sitting at my desk staring at a computer, though. Today I discovered that I'm not afraid of heights! Hello, 17-foot extension ladder. Why yes, I got to know you and your friend Mr. Paint Can quite well.

For your amusement and edification, I've been listening more closely to the Schwarz Dramatic Image Album to see if I can translate parts of it. What I wouldn't give for a transcription of this, even in Japanese! I could really use some kanji so I'd be certain of the meanings of some words, at least. When sentences are particularly complicated, I've mapped out the direct word correspondence below them.

This is largely Crawford-and-Schuldig-centric (you're surprised, I know) because 1) Nagi is fairly easy to understand, 2) Farfarello doesn't talk much and when he does I've been able to figure it out without much trouble, and 3) I really couldn't care less about Colonel Amlich and company.

( Transliteration and translation attempts. I'm pretty pleased with what I managed to come up with. )

My eyeballs are spinning. I really wish I could come up with something significant to end this with, but I'm far too tired XD It took me several seconds to even think of the word "significant." I didn't do all this translating tonight, of course - no brains left for that. I think it's time for bed.

Life update! Well, more of a fandom update, really. Or a "what I've been up to" update.

What I've been up to has not been writing ¬_¬ The writing has just not been happening. I'm not going to worry too much about it, though, because drawing has been happening instead. Anime and manga have staged a brain-coup, and I've also started studying Japanese again. I bought volume 2 of "Japanese in Mangaland," a textbook and workbook that teaches the Japanese language through lessons with examples from real manga (the dialogue is from real manga, but the pictures have been re-drawn due to copyright reasons, which makes it kind of fun to try to figure out what might've been going on in the original). Volume 2 covers what I covered in my end-of-second and beginning-of-third years of Japanese, so it's a refresher for the more complicated grammar points with some added stuff that I didn't learn in class. There's a volume 3 as well that I want to get when I finish this one.

Last week, I got the third volume of The Last Uniform in the mail from Japan! *armwaving* ( This way to translation babbling. )

A couple of weeks ago, I borrowed the first volume of Kashimashi ~Girl Meets Girl~ from the library. It was interesting; I had been avoiding it because I figured it was one of those standard cop-out "boy gets turned into girl and makes out with girls" yuri storylines, and I was highly skeptical about its sensitivity to transgender issues. After reading it, I'm actually more impressed with the way the story handles the main character's transition than the way it portrays same-sex attraction. ( Lengthy thoughts, and spoilers for the first volume. )

I've also been watching (over the past month or two) the first half of the anime Romeo x Juliet. It's pretty freaking awesome, actually - and this is me: not a big fan of the play. The opening sequence was clearly designed for me personally, or at least for anyone who the Utena opening sequence sends into raptures. As caitirin pointed out, it's like they made a list of all the cool things from the Utena opening. Flower imagery? Check. Kickass girls in boys' clothes? Check. Swordfighting? Check. Reaching hands? Check. Gravity-defying exploding architecture? Double freaking check XD The characters are pretty cool, too. ( Squee, blah, spoilers. You know the drill. )

My first successful translation in, like, forever! I tried an Under17 song a few weeks ago and got so discouraged in the first stanza that I gave up. But I got through this song without a single snag (not to be confused with uncertainties, of which I have plenty) and some things even fell into magical place like they used to when I was actually studying Japanese at school.

So :)

Niji, "Rainbow", by Masaharu Fukuyama.

kiite hoshii uta ga aru yo
itsuka iitakatta kotoba ga aru yo

I have a song I want you to listen to
There are words I once said

( To the other side of the sky )

( Notes )

Does anybody on my f'list speak Japanese? If you do, please let me know if there's anything I translated weirdly or wrong! I really want to know :)

YAY, I feel all accomplished.

One of my recent music obsessions is YUKI, who used to sing for Judy and Mary before the band broke up. She's on her own now, and her music is so damn cute I could just die. It's bouncy and happy and it's the kind of thing that makes you want to dance on stone walls and jump in puddles. I just came upon a wealth of romanji lyrics online, and I had searched before and found only one of the songs I have - this page has all of them. I squee loudly with joy now for being able to read along. The English lyrics, which aren't translated but are left in Japanese-English, are so hysterical. Particularly in Maiagare.

"KAMON! HITTO ZA FUROA
RETTO ITTO FUROU ITTSU PA-TI- TAIMU
SURO- YUA HANZU APPU ANDO RETTO AUTO A SUKURI-MU!
WIRU TI-CHI YU- HAU TU PUREI IN A WEI
WIRU RIDI RAIN
ZA MI-NINGU OBU "TU- HABU SAMU FAN"

That being

"Come on! Hit the floor
Let it flow, it's party time
Throw your hands up and let out a scream!
We'll teach you how to play in a way
We'll really learn
The meaning of 'to have some fun'"

... as far as I can tell.

So cute.

Today I had adventures in finding Hitchcock Hall (to deliver posters for the Writing Center), and then adventures in attempting to get in - I didn't know that the Res Life door is down another road on one side of the building, not on any of the other... um... like sixteen sides (very weirdly shaped bunch of buildings here) so I went to the computer cluster to get their phone number so they could let me in. Then I had to figure out how to use the call boxes on the front of the dorm. THEN they told me where the real door was. After all that, it turned out we were supposed to sort our flyers before we brought them in, but I did it there - we were still short, but we got a bunch out to the dorms to post so hopefully we'll have more students come.

Since this is apparently the post of random subject-switching, I saw Pride and Prejudice last night with caitirin and _melisande_. It was absolutely delightful. There is the way to do Jane Austen in movies and the way not to do Jane Austen in movies, and this version (the newer one with Keira Knightley et al, though I haven't seen the Colin Firth one) totally does it the right way. Emma Thompson's version of Sense and Sensibility was the same way. It was funny, pretty, had beautiful music and great actors, and was just fantastically entertaining. There were some kind of weird artsy transitions, and some shots that could have dragged, but you could overlook those because the music was just so pretty. I'd listen for a while, go "Geez, is he STILL walking across that field? Oh well! Pretty music!" and go back to listening contentedly. My absolute favorite thing about it was that Donald Sutherland played Mr. Bennet and that Judi Dench played, er, the Token Bitchy Imperious Old Lady. I pondered for a bit on how weird it was that I went "SQUEEEE!" when I saw Donald Sutherland, yet had no reaction to any of the younger actors ^^;; Leave it to me to fangirl the old people. This also changed my opinion of Keira Knightley, because I didn't particularly like her in PotC or King Arthur, but she was quite good in this. She has the longest neck and the flattest chest I have ever seen on a woman; this makes me feel better for more reasons than that I mistook her for a boy in the King Arthur previews. She has such skinny arms. She'd be really fun to draw or sculpt, but I don't find her attractive other than artistically. Anyway, it was really a wonderful movie.

Good lord, it's late! Hah! I feel like my young college self ^_^

Haha, this colorbar thing is SO cool.

( Icon colorbar )

We have prettyful new windows! They're gorgeous and white and clean and good GOD, they actually OPEN. I know, I know, hard to believe. But they do. And they tilt in to wash, just like the ones my dad put into our old house.

The maintenance guys even moved my bed back and put my curtains back up. Weirdly enough, they didn't do this in any of the other rooms O.o

I went to Barnes and Noble once they got here, to keep out of their way, but didn't buy anything. I just sat in the café and read some, and lugged along my kanji dictionary so I could translate some manga. My Shinsengumi smut manga is entitled Bakumatsu* Adolescence Flowerstorm. Why yes, everyone in it IS gay, thank you. *snickers* It's pretty... dumb, though, which makes me sad. Of course, I shouldn't expect much from just some random manga, and even if the dialogue and plot WAS spectacular, I probably wouldn't be able to translate it. So I should be glad that it was as easy to read as it was. Lots of "Hijikata-saaaaaan!"s and Okita being all "I killed exactly 20 people today ♥ !" and then asking Hijikata out on a date to a new shop he found, just the two of them. Then getting drunk and passing out and catching a fever and asking Hijikata to sleep with him. Not like, sleep with him (because if Okita is the type to say that Hijikata is his kono sekai de ichiban suki (favorite in the whole world!) I don't think he even knows what sex IS) but just sleep in the same futon with him.

I also refrained from buying any manga. But then I went and had lunch at Panera, which was probably bad for me, but I had lowfat soup.

*The Bakumatsu was the civil war in Japan where the revolutionists were trying to reinstate the emperor and overthrow the shogunate. I have no idea how to translate it in one word, so I left it as is.

Ahh, mystery solved.

caitirin and I had been listening to Rie Fu's song from Bleach, Life is Like a Boat, over and over, because it's OMG so pretty. And Caitirin mentioned to me that her English was so good and her Japanese was so... well, articulated, that it didn't sound like a native Japanese speaker when compared to other Japanese singers. So we theorized that it was an English speaker who was just very good at Japanese and could pronounce everything really really well. Then I actually noticed that I had the singer's name on the song file, and as it was Rie Fu, that theory was slightly jostled. Anyway, I was looking her up and I found a Wikipedia article about her.

She is Japanese and was born in Tokyo, but she lived in Maryland from the age of 7 until she was 10, and apparently now she goes to college at the University of Arts, London, and commutes between England and Japan for her career purposes. And she's only 20. She's also a fairly new talent, because her first single was released in March of '04.

Going to see Caitirin now ^_^

Trying to translate Cyber Rose. Chisato sings way too bloody fast to make up for mistakes in the romanji I have saved on my computer. I need the kanji for this, because without it, tsuku is heinous.

Got my Kaze to Ki no Uta manga in the mail today! WHEE! Each volume is very long, but OMG tiny @_@ The printing is so little I'll be lucky to be able to read the regular lettering, let alone the furigana by the kanji. Hwuah.

Had dinner at parents' house tonight. Fiddleheads! Very yummy! It felt good to be there and see them and talk to them. *loves them*

... My parents, not the fiddleheads. Though I did love those, I did not talk to them.

And while I was there, caitirin called n_____________n

I love sort-of-knowing Japanese.

When Anthy talks to her champion/fiancé/the duellists, she uses humble language.

When she talks to anyone else at all, including Utena most of the time, she uses -masu form polite language.

When she runs
Utena through, and when she's in the coffin, and when she goes to find
Utena at the end, she uses plain form familiar language.

*dances in little circles*

caitirin,
the voice you heard on the radio when they were playing Akio's duel
song must have been spliced in from elsewhere, because the last person
to speak before the duel started was Akio. And I'm sure you wouldn't
get his voice confused with a girl's ^_^

Between practically
having the script memorized and what I've learned, I bet I could watch
this show with no subtitles. My DVD's subs are different than my
fansubs, too, and of course I like the latter better. Hee.

This page is SO bloody useful.

I definitely just found Mei's family crest.

Shibata is down there on the second row.

I've
got all these samurai running about in my head because of my history
class, and the most interesting idea that during the Warring States
period (which ended in about 1600 with the unification of the country
by Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu) the daimyo
and other high-ranking lords had very close emotional relationships
with their retainers. According to my class, this changed during the
Tokugawa period because the lords now concerned themselves with
learning and cultural things, as opposed to warfare, and didn't spend
time with their vassals nearly as much since all the daimyo had to be
going back and forth to Edo for that alternate attendance thing. So,
lengthy explanation equals samurai in my head.

There's two, the retainer-type younger one, Honda Masahiko (See
the Honda family crest, third line down) and his lord, who has yet to
receive a name and a concrete rank. He can't be an actual daimyo
because there were records of all of them -_-;; And I've been looking
up names all day. I've found a few that I like, but none of those are
actually families on this page, and I want to have family crests and
kanji and things. This page also has the kanji writings for various
samurai names, although both the computers I've been on today don't
have the capacity to view kanji.