#I had. so much fun with these. it was pure EHEHEHEHEHEHEHE

[dapskie]

PROTO SISSELS

[intheticklecloset]

A Particular Kind of Mood (Big Windup!)

Summary: On the way home from a day of practice games, Abe notices Mihashi seems a little down and goes to check up on him.

A/N: What can I say at this point, I mean honestly? I love Big Windup, I love these boys, I want more of them in my life, I just want to write all of the things for them. Enjoy! <3 <3

Word Count: 1,024

~~~

“Hey,” Abe said, holding on to one of the bus seats to steady himself as he looked at Mihashi, who had been lying slouched against his window seat.

The pitcher immediately snapped to attention. “A-A-Abe! H-Hi!”

“You okay?” the catcher moved to sit beside him, and Mihashi shifted so they could share the seat. They were at the back of the bus – the pitcher’s choice location – on their way home from a long day of practice against a neighboring team. Abe didn’t even have to be told anymore to check in on his teammate; he did it instinctively now, when he thought something was off. It was like a sixth sense at this point. “You’ve been pretty quiet. Quieter than usual, I mean. And you’re sitting by yourself again.”

Mihashi shifted nervously, darting his eyes everywhere. “I’m f-fine. R-Really.”

There was a pause.

“Are you upset that we lost today?”

“W-Well, I’m not thrilled about it, but…but it’s okay. We can’t win them all, r-right?”

Abe couldn’t help but smile a little. A couple of months ago Mihashi would be inconsolable after a loss. He was proud of how far his pitcher had already come, even if he still had a long way to go.

“It would be nice,” he admitted, “but you’re right. We can’t win them all.”

Mihashi nodded. “Yeah.”

Abe studied him for a moment, watching the way he shifted in his seat, clenching and unclenching his fists. At first he’d thought that was a nervous habit of his, but after a little while of observing him in the dugout with the others, he realized it was an unconscious action – something he did when he was in a particular kind of mood.

“Hey,” the catcher said again, softer this time. “Do you want me to tickle you?”

Mihashi startled, pressing up against the window with a wide-eyed look, followed by a bright pink blush that gave everything away before he even spoke. “Y-You…you say it so casually…” he managed, watching Abe a little more closely now.

Abe smirked. “We both know you like it, and that it helps you. Why beat around the bush?” He shifted in his seat so his back was to the aisle, creating a more dominating presence in the confined space. “Well? Do you want me to or not? Tell me clearly.”

The pitcher shivered, swallowed, and finally managed to nod. “Y-Yes. If it’s…if it’s okay—eeep!”

Abe went right to work pinching his sides, using only one hand at first to ease him into it, then switching to both hands after about half a minute, when he knew Mihashi would be a little more comfortable. Giggles spilled from the pitcher freely as he twisted and squirmed on instinct, constantly finding himself trapped against the window.

“Ahahahahahaha! A-Abe – hehehehehehehe!” Mihashi’s smile was big and genuine, encouraging the catcher to switch spots, gradually traveling up from his sides to his ribs, getting closer to a hot spot. Though his friend continued to squeal and squirm, he never protested, never tried to push him away. He just kept clenching and unclenching his fists more rapidly.

“Don’t worry. I’ll stop when you ask me to.” Abe finally moved further up, scribbling into his underarms now, and Mihashi lost the battle against his willpower and clamped his arms to his sides just as he burst into laughter, tossing his head back and thumping it against the window. Abe laughed along with him. “Careful!”

“AHAHAHAHAHAHAHABE!!” Mihashi’s squirming grew more frantic now, his laughter overriding any other thoughts he may have had before. All he could think now was how much it tickled, and how relieved he was that Abe had finally begun to do this more often like the rest of the team did. “EHEHEHEHEHEHEHE!! ABE!!”

“What?” Abe chuckled, scooting a little closer for better access, unintentionally trapping Mihashi even further. “That’s my name. Don’t wear it out. I told you to call me Takaya, anyway.”

Mihashi shook his head through his increasing hysterics, his blush turning a deeper red. Being on a first-name basis with Abe just seemed too…too good to be true. He couldn’t wrap his head around it, no matter how many times his catcher called him “Ren” now.

Since the pitcher seemed to still be having fun, Abe decided to try a different kind of tickling, switching from his purposeful scribbling to digging like he was trying to reach every ticklish inch of Mihashi’s underarms that he could.

It was amazingly effective.

“NAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! AHAHAHAHAHAHABE!!” Mihashi absolutely cackled, his face lighting up with the brightest smile Abe had ever seen. It was so full of pure, unabashed joy he almost couldn’t stop staring. It didn’t even look like the Mihashi he knew anymore, and it felt amazing to be the one to make him this happy.

Suddenly Mihashi grabbed onto the sleeves of Abe’s shirt, clenching them in his fists like he was trying to ground himself, almost doubling over with laughter. The catcher didn’t even have a chance to analyze what he was doing to cause that kind of reaction before his friend was pleading for him to stop, and he pulled his hands away.

For several moments Mihashi continued to hold onto him, catching his breath and giggling out leftover mirth. Eventually he realized what he was doing and jerked back, embarrassed, but smiling all the same.

“T-Thanks,” he said shyly, doing his best to meet Abe’s gaze.

Abe chuckled and ruffled his hair gently. “You don’t have to thank me every time I tickle you, Ren.”

Mihashi froze. Hearing Abe use his first name was still new to him, and it threw him every time.

A poke to his side broke him out of his stiff posture.

“Dude, don’t tense up on me now. Not after I just put in all that effort to loosen you up.”

“S-Sorry.” Mihashi expected his friend to get up and leave, but instead Abe settled himself into the seat beside him, slouching down with his arms over his chest, closing his eyes. “Y-You’re going to sit with me?”

“Duh. Why not?”

This time, the pitcher smiled entirely on his own.

[edmtranslations]

LOUD No. 168 - Justice Interview [Documentation]

i h AT E

I wish I could say that this interview was manageable in most extents, but that’d be lying. LOUD 168 is one of my absolute favourite interviews, and maybe that played a part in it, but it was also an absolute pain to get right. Nothing in it was simple, not the interview, not the ad translation, not trying to pry apart illegible kanji... it was worth it, but believe me when I say that I was working for days on this, and that I needed all of that time to make this translation the best that I possibly could.

Well tell a lie. I was working on the translation a long time ago. I was just really lazy and didn’t get to it properly until recently, is all. 

[ Article source: (x) ]

Unfortunately, that is because I am not that good at Japanese.

I can link the above image without pixelation because 1) the article is freely online and 2) the parts relevant to the translation I’m talking about are not in that image. I don’t distribute scans or document versions of the original language text on this blog as a rule, and try to blur out as much as I can/reveal as little as possible, but: chances are, a lot of you already have seen the LOUD 168 scans a long time ago. (I did not work with those precise scanned images when it came to cleanup + translation, because those aren’t big enough to create legible PDFs - but attribution is attribution.)

But yes. Anyway, a lot of disclaiming aside, I’m not that good at Japanese. A huge hurdle in any hanzi-based language that I know is the fact that if I can’t read it, I can’t translate it - my Japanese simply isn’t good enough to figure things out from context unless I sit there with dictionary in hand, going through each kanji bit by bit. It’s very exhausting, and unfortunately this interview was chock full of those moments. A big part of why it took me so long to write out this translation and edit it was because, when I was working with only the above scans (because I had the illusion that I could just skim-read and jot down my notes, or something), I could flat out not read half of it.

That’s not pixelation. I just zoomed in on the A Cross the Universe ad from the above post and tried to make out the kanji. I face this problem all the time. What the hell is it? I don’t know, just looking at that image. I’m not good enough to figure things like that out by looking at small or scribbled text. Until I had the idea to start looking in archives and old ad copies of this film - because it did not appear to be a magazine-specific ad, the one given in LOUD 168 - I had no idea what to make of most of that text, and thus gave up.

(I finally found the online version, linked up there. HMV ad. Of course. The kanji is 撮影.)

What I’m trying to say is that a lot of mental gymnastics needed to be done simply to make this translation legible and accurate. I don’t get the choice to walk away from a kanji I don’t know, and I rightly shouldn’t; even if I have to search by radicals and scour every bit of joyo kanji for a likely fit, I need to find it and gather the correct meaning through any means possible. I claim days of work on this interview, and I must clarify that I’m counting this by the hours - I really must have spent 48+ pure hours working on this interview, a good chunk of which was devoted to pure comprehension. 

It wasn’t all doom and gloom, though. I was able to have some fun with the text while I was translating - they don’t actually mention A Cross the Universe by title all that much in this interview, at least not as much as I’ve mentioned it within square brackets in my translation. I attempted to make up to this by having a couple of relevant quotes reference back to the title.

The better translation is ‘... roaming the world’. I just couldn’t miss the opportunity, that was all.

Eheheheheheheh

That’s actually in the text, too. That’s not just me being silly. The nipple discourse is also word for word, pretty much. Why would I need to put in so much effort to be humourous when the masters of electro can do the job so much better eh

and of course it’s just the best feeling in the world when your translation length doesn’t fit

This happened a few times in this interview, though admittedly, not as often as I feared. The interview has such a weird layout that any mistake or under/over-writing would have affected the cross-shapes negatively later on.

A preview of the full title page. Originally the translation at the bottom was ‘Chosen By Our Top DJs’, but there was no way to make that fit.

Finding the right font for the surprisingly long ad was an art form on its own. I’m satisfied with the end product, but I do wish that it could have been a bit shorter - I don’t reckon there would have been a good way to do so, though, without compromising too much of the content. You make do.

I hope it doesn’t look so claustrophobic. Thankfully, my text was much more co-operative when it came to the actual interview. Forming the cross shape wasn’t as awful as I thought the task would be, having to resort to literally putting tape measures on my monitor aside.

And the preview of the full PDF!

That’s about all that needs writing down for the documentation. I’m honestly very exhausted after finishing this project, I think I’m going to go light for a while. There are some big projects I have in mind - Daft Punk Crossbeat 2001, Electro Book 2010, and so on - but for now, they can wait.

Next up is some good old Brodinski, I reckon. Thank you for reading this far, and for enjoying the translation! My readers make it all worthwhile. <3333

Disclaimer: The original text of this interview and associated material, given by Justice and printed in LOUD Magazine in 2008, is not copyrighted by this blog nor by the author of this post. Therefore, the original Japanese text will not be distributed here. The author claims ownership of the wording of this translation, which does not deny nor seek to possess the existence of other translations. This translation may be subject to changes in the future.