#but I learned something about Japanese UFO-summoning-chants today so there's that

[turtleations]

HIDE Inspiration Talk 50 (# 24 - 26) - Translation

Eyeball

The first ring with an eyeball-motive that I bought was from a ring shop in New York, where the uncle from the shop said, “This artificial eye belonged to a terribly unlucky person, so if you wear it, you will be free from misfortune from now on,” so I bought it and put it on. I don’t know if he was lying or speaking the truth, though. I started collecting them afterwards. I’m into gross accessories. Because when Gene Simmons wore a scorpion bracelet and a spider ring, I thought, “Oh, cool!”

UFO

When I was a child, I thought of space as the place where the so called monster graveyard that made whirring noises from Ultraman, Alien Baltan and the like was (laughs). There was a period when I was engrossed with UFOs. Starting when I read the book of Yaoi Junichi [*1935, journalist specializing in UFOs], I thought, “Aliens exist for sure. The Soviet Union and the US are covering it up!” I said, “There is a base on the moon. The VIPs are migrating there one after the other,” and made the others read the book as well (laughs).

When I was in elementary school, we would also go looking for UFOs. We’d meet on our bicycles, go up the mountain, and make a base that we filled with anything connected to UFOs. There, on a flat open place nearby, we would all hand-in-hand say, “Venturer, Venturer, space people”*, and “Won’t you come here?”, all bringing our cameras with us (laughs).

[*) A chant commonly used to summon a UFO from out of nowhere. The translation “Venturer” is an educated guess made by me, picked as the most sensible, though not the most obvious choice for transcribing the word ベントラ. I have been unable to find an official transcribtion.]

[On a different note, this is the only quote from the collection that has an actual line break in it, so I suspect that those two paragraphs were taken from different interviews.]

America

When I was a child, I thought of the US as the country where KISS lives. Now it’s a place that’s good for music production. That said, I only know L.A.. Music aside, I’d call it a city of zones. Whether it’s for work or for fun, there is a certain degree of division into zones, which allows you to tell which areas are dangerous and which are safe. Therefore, although it is a functional city, you could also call it a cold city.