The Song of Steve

Stephen Horowitz
March 12, 2001

Welcome to this week's edition of Country Life. Now, many of you have written in telling me that I should write these more often because they are so funny, interesting, wonderful, etc. In other words, a perfect reflection of their writer. However, I have some bad news. Because as of this week my job has actually started, I have a feeling that these columns will get less frequent rather than more frequent as I find myself having to write 40-50 minute speeches in Japanese at work rather than writing these emails. Of course, the fact that I should be writing a speech right now isn't deterring me from keeping my fans happy, but eventually I will have to start writing those speeches...

Sorry about that interruption. In other news I've discovered a way to help keep me from forgetting all of the kanji (Chinese characters) that I've learned. Since I don't do any work that requires me to read documents in Japanese, it is very easy for me to forget kanji and various grammar patterns that only appear in writing. Therefore, I have started translating the lyrics to Japanese songs that I like. This serves three purposes. First, I learn (or re-learn) any kanji in the song. Second, I really begin to understand what the song is about so that I can appreciate it for its contents as well as its tune. Third, I memorize the lyrics much faster so that I can sing the song when we go out and do karaoke, thereby impressing everyone. For some reason, despite the fact that they know I can speak Japanese very well, it never ceases to impress them when I sing in Japanese, even if they've heard me sing the same song the previous 50 times we did karaoke. Maybe that's because they never remember from time to time due to certain ...ahh... influences.

I've included a portion of my work below. It's actually very difficult to maintain both the overall feeling of the song and keep the language somewhat poetic. This is from a song by "L'Arc en Ciel." Oddly enough, though it's by a Japanese band, their name means "rainbow" in French. The song is called "Neo Universe," (sorry "Matrix" fans, no relationship).

hibiwaresoudemo toumei na mama de kinou nemurazu matteitanda ne yume o miteita kiseki wa mou konaikedo tooi sora ga michibiite

anata wa kaze no you ni yasashiku tori no you ni jiyuu ni kono sekai o habataku kowagarazu ni neo universe

Last night I waited for you, restless, on the crystal slopes of the rift that has opened between us. And though the miracle that I saw in my dreams didn't appear, the distant sky will lead the way back to me.

As gently as a breeze and as freely as a bird, You fearlessly open the wings of this world to the new universe.

Or something like that. Those of you who know Japanese, feel free to critique me. You'll notice that I took a whole bunch of poetic license with the grammar translation and, occasionally, with the translation of individual words, but in this case a direct translation, aside from not really making any sense, sounds ugly and awkward.

I find myself slipping English in with my Japanese more and more frequently, especially in the case of exclamations. I think it is the English-speaking portion of my brain rebelling against its disuse. Of course, the opposite is also occurring. I find it harder and harder to think of words in English when the same word in Japanese will pop into my head almost automatically. In some ways, Japanese really is a more convenient language in that certain things that can be expressed with only a word or two in Japanese require a whole sentence in English. Although the opposite also occurs occasionally, I think it is much less frequent.

Well, I think that's it for this edition. It's unusually short and it's the first one that I wrote all in a single day, but I have speeches to write, trips to Kyoto to plan, and other interesting things to do. But remember, in everything that you do, be sure to be genki. The Japanese word genki means, depending on the circumstances, upbeat, healthy, full of vim and vigor, etc. They use it quite frequently and the typical ending for a letter is ogenki de, which pretty much means, "Be genki!" Ogenki de!