Saturday, May 16, 2009

きよしのズンドコ節 ~ 氷川きよし

I like translating enka songs, they're so down-to-earth <3

One of the songs I linked to the other day,

Hikawa Kiyoshi's "Kiyoshi no Zundoko Bushi"

Flowers blown by the wind fall,
Flowers wet from the rain also fall.
If a flower blooms, someday it will fall.
The same rule applies to the flower of love.

At the ramen shop in the alley over there,
With the girl in the red cheongsam,
I quietly exchange looks.
I always get an extra two or three pieces of roast pork.

Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the day after that.
My heart changes like a windmill.
My chest floods with tears.
As a man, I can't show my face.

At the gasoline stand on the corner,
Stained with oil, wearing her hair in braids,
Somehow her radiant eyeteeth
And overflowing dimples weigh on my mind.

When it's hot, complaints
Bind my mouth into a straight line.
Someday I will definitely return
To my hometown as a success.

So holding tight to an amulet,
Singing with a dialect,
Looking at the west sky, I call out to a
Faraway, gentle mother.

 

Note: zunzun as in the refrain means rapidly, and doko means where, so it could be "going somewhere fast." Or it could just be a nonsense-sound.

And it makes a little more sense, though not much, after watching the awesomely early 2000s music video.

Or, even awesomer, the 1969 version by the Drifters - the Japanese group, not to be confused with the American.

 

In entirely non-Japanese news, I've been fascinated lately with this webcam of a nesting osprey in Scotland. It manages, at the same time, to be very soothing and very exciting. Out of three eggs, one hatched last night. The resulting chick is adorably awkward and squirmy. It tried sitting up and fell over on its back. Mama Osprey fed it bits of fish. I left the webcam on this afternoon with the sound up while I cleaned around my apartment, looking over occasionally. Hearing a tell-tale crack, I came to watch in time to see a second egg crack and another feathery worm tumble out to join its sibling. Then Mama Osprey sat on them both, hiding them from camera view.

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