//beconfused

I won’t be posting Japanese music lyric translations for a while. I sort of ended my run too. I planned to post 10 of these. I post every Friday until the there are 10. The feedback has been quite positive so far, but last week, I posted number 10.

So this week, there’s nothing. I decide to post some credits instead.

I listen to some Japanese songs, some of which have rather strange lyrics, so I posted them. I never did translations, I do not understand Japanese. I took lyric translations from fan pages etc. Sometimes, the web fails me and I ended up typing the lyrics out by copying the subtitles from the video clip.

The songs come from different sources, I shan’t talk much about it, lol. Some came from video clips. I use m&g Software’s AVI to WAV extractor 3.5 to extract out the sound from the video. [The software is free by the way.]

For song cropping, normalizing of volumes and fading in and out, I use either Ahead Nero Wave Editor or Sonic Foundry Sound Forge. Both are good programs, I use the latter more though.

Songs are encoded in Windows Media Audio 9 for smaller downloads at a quality loss. I use Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9 Series to encode all my music. [This is a free software too.] Windows Media Audio sounds best at lower bit rates as compared to other formats.

Some posts include still image captures, these are captured by Microsoft Windows Media Player 9 Series. [This is another free software.] Images are later cropped or edited by Macromedia Fireworks. [Photoshop committed suicide, great..]

These are the past postings [Most of the music are removed already, sorry.]

# music//ichi [Ayumi Hamasaki - Real Me]
# music//ni [Yukino Satsuki - Densetsu no Onsen GAME (Legendary Hot-Springs Turtle)]
# music//san [NICEGUYJIN - Hai, Irasshai! (Hello, Welcome!)]
# music//shi [Funta - Wake Up Angel ~ Negaimashite wa Mugen Nari ~ (Wake Up Angel ~ Wishing for this is unlimited ~)]
# music//go [Aoi Tada - Wo Qui Non Coin]
# music//roku [Yuuichirou Sakuraba - Hitoribocchi no Haburashi (Lonely Toothbrush)]
# music//shichi [Gackt - To build a fire (To feel a fire)]
# music//hachi [Judy and Mary - Kujira 12 gou (Whale #12)]
# music//ku [Maki Goto - Genshoku GAL Hadeni Ikube! (An Authentic GAL Should Be Bold)]
# music//ju [MiniMoni - Okashi Tsukutte Okassui (Making Sweets: Strange)]

I enjoyed posting these. I’ll do these weekly posting thingy in future too.

Yesterday, I posted a quote that has been posted a day before. I forgotten to change it to a new one in my template. Opps.

I was flipping through my folders and double-clicked on “Hitoribocchi no Haburashi.wma”. It’s the song from a Japanese drama called “Mukodono” (ムコ殿) [Fuji Television, 2001], roughly translated to “Son-in-law”. This romantic drama stars Tomoya Nagase, the front man of band, TOKIO, as Yuuichirou Sakuraba (桜庭裕一郎)and Yuko Takeuchi as Arai Sakura.

It is about a popular star, Yuuichirou Sakuraba (sometimes spelt as “Yuichiro Sakuraba”), who is known for his cool personality. But he is not as cool as his fans thought when he marries into the family of his love interest, Arai Sakura. [Japanese traditions state that women marry into men's family, so the other way round is considered somewhat a disgrace.] He has to juggle with releasing of his upcoming single – “Hitoribocchi no Haburashi”, and his new and rather eccentric family.

[NOTE: All names are formated as such - First name, Last name.]

In 2001, Tomoya Nagase released a single with the song “Hitoribocchi no Haburashi” through the name “Yuuichirou Sakuraba”, his on-screen role. A photo book soon followed up, under the name “Yuuichirou Sakuraba” too. “Mukodono 2003″ (ムコ殿２００３) [Fuji Television, 2003] is released in 2003 [of course] withTomoya Nagase back as “Yuuichirou Sakuraba” and a totally new crew. Noriko Sakai plays Minami Ishihara, Sakuraba’s love interest. It’s a parallel plot, the drama lacks chemistry. The only other person that is back is Tsunkuas Takuro Komine. Tsunku [just Tsunku only] is the brains behind Hello Project which includes MiniMoni, Morning Musume and PucchiMoni.

“Hitoribocchi no Haburashi” means “Lonely Toothbrush”. “Ha” means “tooth” and “burashi” is the katakana-ized version of “brush”.

I have encoded 1min 48sec sample in WMA file proprietary (Windows Media Audio 9 20 kbps, 16 kHz, stereo 2-pass CBR) for you people. Stereo is back, I encoded in mono the previous time, hehee.

Download the sample from here _(281 KB)_ [Apologies - music download has been removed.]

Hitoribocchi no Haburashi
[Lonely Toothbrush]
haburashi wa itsu mo no you ni
[Our two toothbrushes are in front of-]
kagami no mae nikko narande
[the mirror just like always.]
Ah, matsu yo ore wa matteru
[Ah, I'll wait. I'm waiting.]
shinjite matsu yo*
[I'll believe in you and wait.]

tashika ni ore wa
[I may not be-]
sonna kiyou ni konasu hou ja nai shi
[clever and]
ima demo ore wa
[I still-]
sonna jouzu ni jooku mo ienai
[can't tell jokes well.]

“aishiteru” kono kotoba ga
["I love you" I just-]
ano hi iezu ni ah
[couldn't say those words that day. Ah]
mirai made todoku you na
[I want to give you love that will-]
ai tsutaetai “aitshiteru yo”
[reach the future. "I love you."]

haburashi wa ore no dake ga
[Only my toothbrush-]
itande yuku naze nanda
[is getting worn out. Why?]
nee kimi wa ai no tsudzuki wo
[Hey, who are you-]
nee dare to shiteru?
[continuing your love story with?]

Translated by Bob; I did not include the full lyrics.

I really liked this song. I normally take less than an hour to compile these lyrics and blog them, but this time I took 2 hours. And why’s that so? I was singing along with the tune.

3 days ago, I was struggling to find some lyrics to display for my Friday slot. I can’t find any that time. This afternoon, I filtered Windows Media Player for Japanese song and random them. This song is the first one I heard. So, once again, I really liked this song. So I decided to go check out what Nagase is singing about.

About a lonely toothbrush?

It’s very creative to sing about toothbrushes nevertheless. I guess this isn’t the perfect love song to sing for a girl.

I’ll continue to sing this song, see ya. [haburashi wa itsu mo no you ni..]