Thursday, May 27, 2010

“This is relevant to my interests…”

I was telling Mama how my favorite Japanese singer, Domoto Tsuyoshi, made the unfortunate fashion decision to dye his eyebrows blonde. (The acronym IDEK was invented for situations like these.) She asked for photographic proof, and there just so happened to be a magazine spread about it, and I just so happen to own a scanner.

Yes, that’s my little eyebrow-less wonder on the left… I’d say this was his worst styling mistake ever but he also had a mullet for a short period once – compared to that this is stylin’

I pretty much only bought the magazine because I wanted to know what the caption said about it:

On this day, when Tsuyoshi appears with his eyebrows colored gold, Koichi asks suddenly, "What happened! Your eyebrows went bald!?"
From the first recording, it seems Koichi can't help but be interested.

Acting it out, Tsuyoshi answers, "While I was walking in Venus Fort [a shopping mall near the studio] they were stolen away..."
Actually, "circumstances of work" seems to be the real situation, but since Koichi is so curious Tsuyoshi asks, "You too?"
Koichi immediately replies, "I won't do it!"
"Because even if you do, I won't interrogate you." Is he encouraging Koichi to get gold eyebrows!?

Oh, Tsuyoshi… You really just do this to test the loyalty of your fans, don’t you…

 

On a related note, I’m rather proud of my “figuring things out while attempting to translate” skillz. Where it says “acting it out” the original Japanese was koshibai, with the kanji of 小芝居. The only translation I could find for it online was in a kabuki glossary: “A small-scale, unlicensed theater during the Edo period.” So what would it mean when connected to an explanation? The particle “de” can indicate a wide range of at, on, in, with, and then – but obviously he wasn’t at or in a kabuki theater, he was in a TV studio. So I thought demonstrating the action as though he were a one-man theater would make the most sense. I posted that translation for a few fellow fans, and then since I had Japanese class the next day I brought in that question. I was embarrassed to bring the magazine itself, so I just wrote down the rudimentary sentence: “Someone answered [somethingsomething] as a small-theater.” My teacher said she hadn’t heard the word used as an adverb before, but would think it meant pretty much what I’d figured. And who said shallow infatuations with celebrities can’t be educational…

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