(Ms.) Tomo Kimura’s Translation/Tokyo Notes

There used to be a quarterly girls-love magazine called “Yuri Shimai” that folded after only five issues. Fortunately, the mangakas and their series have been picked up by a new quarterly magazine called “Comic Yurihime.” Hopefully this magazine will last longer. So far two issues have come out, with lovely cover illustrations by the illustrator for the Marimite novels.

Comic Yurihime is being published as supplementary issues of Comic ZERO-SUM.

Since the item is available on amazon now - the “new series 2″ I’ve been working on is Nakamura Yoshiki’s “Skip Beat!” which is being serialized in Hana to Yume.

Tom & Jerry

The show used to be shown on Japanese TV, so it’s a reference people will recognize in a slapstick situation like this. (I have vague memories of watching the show as a child.)

Babashatsu

Commonly called so because they’re considered stuff only an obasan (middle-aged women) would wear. Although nowadays, there are ultra-thin babashatsu in different colors, so you can be fashion-conscious and still be warm.

Festival Foods

Ringoame - candied apple
Watagashi - cotton candy
Takoyaki - round dough cooked with bits of tako (= octopus) in them.
Yakisoba - stir-fried noodle, flavored with Worcestershire sauce.
Suzu Castella - like Baby Castella, but shaped like bells (= suzu).

The Shooting Game

This is a game where you shoot at the boxes of snacks. You get them if you manage to knock them down. There are games where the prizes are other things, like toys.

Kingyo Sukui

You find this everywhere at summer festivals. This is a game where you scoop the fish with the round thing Eimi’s holding. (The round thing is a frame with thin paper on it.) If you manage to scoop goldfish out into a bowl with it, you can take them home.

Kuroko the Goldfish

The goldfish is probably black (= kuro), and Eimi made it a female name by adding “ko” at the end.

Washbowl

You need a washbowl when taking baths because you put your soap/shampoo/etc. in your washbowl, and take it to the shared public bath. Since you wash your body/hair outside the bathtub in Japanese baths, you can use the washbowl to scoop hot water out of the bathtub, and slosh it over your body to rinse your body/hair (although usually there’s a row of faucets/showers that you sit in front of, and you can either shower off your soap, or put hot water in your washbowl to slosh it over your body). You also take your washbowl to the Washing Room when you wash your face in the morning.

Red bean jelly

Normal red bean jelly comes in bar form, and you slice it into pieces. The jelly Eimi is holding is the type sold in convenience stores, and they are already in individual slices, wrapped and ready to eat.

This is a collection of one-shot stories by Umino Tsunami. It contains stories that wouldn’t quite fit as fillers for a love story series tankobon.

My favorite story is the one where a retired dad slowly gets over the death of his wife by getting into remodeling. He remodels the entire house nice and tidy, as well as making it a place to remind him of the days he spent with his wife.

This issue contains a preview of the manga version of “KAMIKAZE GIRLS.” It’s closer to the novel than to the movie. The graphic novel will have an author-approved sequel, too.

BTW, Kansai is not a prefecture, it’s a region that spans several prefectures in the west, such as Kyoto, Osaka, and Hyogo.

Manzai (two-person stand-up comedy) in the Kansai area typically has one person play the “boke” and the other the “tsukkomi.”

The boke makes people laugh by saying funny things, acting weird, or reacting weirdly to what the tsukkomi says. The tsukkomi then cuts in, pointing out the weirdity. What the tsukkomi says then is supposed to be the punch line, getting bigger laughs. The tsukkomi can be physical as well as verbal, with the tsukkomi slapping the boke’s chest, for example.

The boke is in charge of keeping things going in the routines. By having the tsukkomi cut in, the tsukkomi works to end a topic (or subtopic), and give the routine structure a good rhythm.

Tsukkomi Lines

These lines are easier to spot in the original, because the font is very distinctive, but lines like “Taking the Fifth,” and “She asks directly” are a sort of “tsukkomi” lines. It’s very Kansai-style-type comedy.

Sawaguchi and Onee Kotoba

In the original, Sawaguchi talks in “onee kotoba.” This is a way a lot of gay and transvestite men talk in Japan, and basically, they use words and sentence endings that are reserved for women only. No explanation is given about why he talks this way. Maybe it’s because he’s around so many girls as superintendent?

Takefuji Dancers

The current dancing commercial is available on the net only. You can watch the dancers dance away from here, and by clicking CM Preview (the jingle is still the same one as the one used when the poster Misao stole came out).

Eimi’s bribe to Sawaguchi

The gift box probably contains liquor. The wrapping paper (with the bow and that thing printed on the upper right of the paper) is called “noshi gami.” When you give someone a formal gift, you usually have it wrapped with noshi gami. You can write what the gift is for, on top of the “bow,” center of the noshi gami (for example, to celebrate a birth of a baby). In that case, you usually write your last name below the “bow.” also center of the noshi gami.