Posts tagged with shigesato itoi
- Is the bullpen where they keep the strong?
- Where on the field is the slash line?
-
These are sex acts. Use your imagination. ↩
- An assistant mustn’t eat any pastry their employer’s set aside for later.
- An assistant mustn’t turn away clients because their employer finds them beautiful.
- An assistant mustn’t toss their employer’s stale tea away on their own discretion.
- An assistant mustn’t use word such as “like” or “um” when speaking to their employer.
- An assistant musn’t wish for a nicer chair or salary than their employer.
- An assistant mustn’t add the term ‘manager’ to their business card.
- this is not the most accurate translation you’ll ever find. my interest in the project is mostly literary, and my japanese might be called “studied but inept,” like a novice monk in 1500’s latin
- i know of the other partial translation online, but i’m not consulting it, for same reasons as above
- respecting authorial intentions, as expressed in the books foreword, i will not be marking who wrote what on this page. that’s only there with the stories themselves
- let me know what you think, imagined reader. contact link’s there in the menu
- Eisenhower
- Assistant
- Asparagus
- Apartment
- Work
- Allergies
- Encore
- Antithesis
- Interview
- Indian
- Interior
- West Coast
- Etiquette
- Elite
- Elevator
- Sardines in Oil
- All Night
- Onion Soup
- Carpet
- Kama Sutra
- Cutlet
- Camp Fire
- Quiz Show
- Cool Mint Gum
- Club
- Grape Drops
- K
- Coin
- Coffee
- Coffee Cup
- Coca Cola
- Condor
- Surfer
- Sudden Death
- Salary Man
- Season
- Off-Season
- Shaving Cream
- Shigesato Itoi
- City Boy
- Shower
- Jungle Book
- Shortstop
- Jinx
- Squeeze
- Superman
- Star Wars
- Stereotype
- Straight
- Special Issue
- Sweater
- Xerox
- Soft Serve
- Softball
- Direct Mail
- Taxi
- Talcum Powder
- Charlie Manuel
- Chewing Gum I
- Chewing Gum II
- Disney Land
- Debt
- Death Match
- Tent
- Donuts I
- Donuts II
- Dog Food
- Nickname
- Knock
- Highway
- High Heel
- Haruki Murakami
- Bread
- Handsome
- Beer
- Philip Marlowe
- Blue Suede Shoes
- Blueberry Ice Cream
- Playboy Party Joke
- Baseball
- Penguin
- Whale
- Hotel
- Pony Tail
- Margarine
- Masquerade
- Match
- May
- Disco Ball
- Mozart
- Moral
- Rack
- Love Letter
- Last Scene
- Lunch
- Runway
- Raincoat
- Wham!
- Bow Wow
Shortstop, by Shigesto Itoi
my translation of the forty-seventh story (out of 99) of 夢で会いましょう [Meet Me in a Dream] by Haruki Murakami and Shigesato Itoi, not guaranteed to be accurate. see the intro post to read more!
So—is it the shortstop who scores points? (A certain friend of mine (much older) asked me this.)
Well, in a sense they can (I answered), but really their point is preventing other teams from scoring runs.
Ahh, yes I remember that. They make outs.
Yes, that’s true. But remember: plays can also be ruled safe.
Right, safe. And are short-hops related to shortstops?
Well, beyond the similarity in the words, I guess a shortstop could always short-hop a ball.
I see.
My friend went on and on with a real impressive amount of questions. E.g:
This guy—you can never give him a clear answer. No matter what I say, it doesn’t take.
Sometimes all I wanna do is sigh and tell him, Look man, that’s a homerun, that one’s safe. Et cetera.
translator's note: apologies if the baseball terms are terrible. i tried to do my best to adapt puns
Coca-Cola, by Shigesto Itoi
my translation of the forty-seventh story (out of 99) of 夢で会いましょう [Meet Me in a Dream] by Haruki Murakami and Shigesato Itoi, not guaranteed to be accurate. see the intro post to read more!
If you take the Coca-Cola company at their word, Coca-Cola was synthesized in a lab. They stake this claim out clear in PR and ads. But do only the barest bit of research and you’ll find a better truth: Coca-Cola comes from the natural world.
Let’s get our facts straight—the Coca-Cola company tells us they harvest their cola straight from Cola Trees in the jungles of Borneo, and this much is true! My regular readers know as well the taboo the native Dayaks there have towards Cola Trees: they’ll never touch them. It’s obscene. What you might not know is this—naturally formed, deep in mountains hidden by the forest, are what are known as Cola Taps. Spigots, valves, faucets, etc. You get the picture.
The Coca-Cola company in fact runs mining operations there. Cola Taps are strip mined. Worse (if you trust the record) these taps were discovered first by Conquistadors in the 16th century. The Spanish used the basin these taps form in to dispose waste—their human waste—meaning as toilet! No wonder the Dayaks came to avoid the place: it smelled of nothing more than olive oil rotting in the sun.
And that’s not it! North of this basin, behind the waterfall that feeds it, Cola Phials naturally form—always in twelves. The Dayak people consider the area sacred, as a space of divine gifts. Thus Cola Phials weren’t discovered till World War II, by a Japanese soldier, who was hiding there waiting for orders to ship back out: he’d found a phial and used it as a container to wash rice. A local elder (it was no secret to the Dayak this soldier was there) explained there were even more where that had come from—a near endless amount. There’s record of this even—look it up! Any paper, 1945, under Foreign Affairs.
Anyhow, let’s cut right to the chase: the Cokea Monkey. How does this creature fit in this?
The Cokea monkey: we may lack photo evidence, but other evidence shows he’s real. Since ancient times we know he’s gone to Cola Trees, fitted his Cola Taps inside them, filled his Cola Phials up. Even the MIC’s aware of that. FOIA requested records of NSF research—which I have, and will send if you dm—record exploratory interviews with Bornean fauna—orangutans, elephants, anunnaki, wasps, etc.—and even this revealed little more than the creatures fame. Maybe—maybe!—these animals’ silences told more than words. What might they have hid in secret smiles?
If history tells us anything, the powerful get the last laugh. This opinion, in fact, was shared by the NSF—very, very suspicious, concluded one redacted portion of their committee’s report.
Remember: speculation is only as true as the circumstances behind it.
More as I learn it.
translator's note: this was another difficult one for me, so i tried to disguise in pyrotechnics. i get the distinct impression some of these shorts are sort of one-and-dones, in the sense they're not the most thought out, so to hide both that and my own amateur inconsistencies, i've added the whole conspiracy theory twist. call it a 21st century update, or a somewhat loose interpretation. its like jazz
Club, by Shigesato Itoi
my translation of the twenty-fifth story (out of 99) of 夢で会いましょう [Meet Me in a Dream] by Haruki Murakami and Shigesato Itoi, not guaranteed to be accurate. see the intro post to read more!
I was watching one of those gossip shows. Friends had told me the tarot horoscopes they did were scary accurate. They read them out at the end of the program’s hour.
My fortune–I’m a Scorpio–was positive.
“Have you ever found a lost gold ring?” a woman in gypsy costume said with a conspiratorial confidence. “Your weekend will feel lucky as that.”
This sounded alright to me. Joyously, I chose to plan my day. I’d try something new, I’d be real brave. I was still essentially a child.
Next the woman read the cards for Pisces. She pulled a five of clubs.
“Beware of nightclubs after 5,” she interpreted.
Young and dumb and fully undissuaded, I stood from the kitchen table and considered my luck.
As usual, that day I’d slept in late.
All Night, by Shigesato Itoi
my translation of the seventh story (out of 99) of 夢で会いましょう [Meet Me in a Dream] by Haruki Murakami and Shigesato Itoi, not guaranteed to be accurate. see the intro post to read more!
Mister All-Night: that’s what they call Jokichi.
Other pimps stay up all night as well, but they aren’t Mister All-Night.
Every night, after the 11PM baseball report’s finished, he lets out an “Oh”.
This Oh more or less means Welp, I’d best get going. Who is he telling this to? No one’s there to hear him.
During business hours, Mika-chan’s busy working: bubble dances, periscopes1, the like.
Nonetheless, the exact same time Jokichi that says Oh, Mika replies, “Aii.” It’s nothing more than a single, private Aii, bothering no one. No customer for example asks her, “What’s that about? Aii?”
Jokichi is Mika’s pimp. “You simply have to be my pimp,” she’d told him once: certainly a generous offer. She’s often felt she must be in love with him, or something like love leastwise. This is what she thinks of as she works, though only absently, so as not to neglect her current customer. The possibility of feeling a love toward Jokichi is unquestionably a personal affair, thus not something to think of at the office, so to speak. Nonetheless (her customer’s penis peeks above the surface of his bath, she moves to mount it) Mika wonders, in her heart, if the feeling might not interfere with what she’s doing.
At the apartment Jokichi absently undoes the electric lock. He’s off to jog. His eggplant-purple tennis shoes bounce one after the other over the hallway’s red carpet.
Jokichi skips the elevator and descends the emergency stairs. It’s the end of fall, so his breath is white. Jokichi’s at his happiest when the Yoimuri Giants win. Mika-chan moved in with him in April, April’s the baseball season’s start. The Giants had played the Chunichi Dragons. Come to think of it, opening day had been rainy and just as cold as now. Then, as happens with time, the weather warmed and since then chilled again. The whole while Mika-chan had lived with him. Something like happiness, huh, Jokichi ponders. His happiness wasn’t caused by the Giant’s success, this much was obvious. Were they to only reach third place this year, in other words, he and Mika-chan would continue as they had. You’re bring dumb, he thinks, in other words.
He takes a break from jogging halfway to Mika’s storefront and starts to sing: “Dabada dabada badabadabah! Dababada-dah! Dabadaba-yoo-hoo!” It’s just passed midnight.
Jokichi sits on a bench, wipes his sweat, looks to the sky. He calls for Mika-chan.
Simultaneously she looks to the sky and thinks of him. They share a promise.
The way stormy days often clear by evening: so it is with them.
Unlike his other girls, Mika gets off at 1AM.
While she changes back into clothes, Jokichi stops by a 24-hour drug store. He calls a taxi after and gets inside. He drinks canned coffee and catches his breath. Soon Mika-chan will be there to meet him. She will jog up to this spot as well.
Why do they do this so much? He doesn’t know. It seems to make her happy that they meet up at this place.
They return the apartment and shower together, then Jokichi reads to her aloud. His voice ekes out his mouth, his quiet voice just at her earside. He reads like this to her till 2AM.
Next: thirty minutes asking Mika how she feels while drinking beer.
Once the dawn breaks, they have sex. Mika-chan has lots of sex for work, so with him she wants it slow and sweetly. Gently, sleepily, Jokichi moves sweetly and slow.
They go to bed.
Just before falling asleep Mika asks Jokichi, “Same tomorrow?”
“Hmm”, he says. He rolls over in his sleep.
Yes, I want to be with him tomorrow, Mika thinks. She smiles and falls asleep as well.
The planets had aligned and thus a pimp materialized---an intelligent friend had told Mika this once. “Don’t be silly,” Jokichi had said when she’d repeated this to him. Mika, at the time, had laughed as well.
translator’s note: this one was hard as hell to put together, maybe past my abilities now. there’s a lot of slang in it, and i know nothing of japanese sex work. still: i tried my best to paper over these inadequacies. hopefully the story comes thru well
Footnotes
Assistant, by Shigesato Itoi
my translation of the second story of 夢で会いましょう [Meet Me in a Dream] by Haruki Murakami and Shigesato Itoi, not guaranteed to be accurate. see the intro post to read more!
Given all this, from now till the end of time, I do not plan to be an assistant.
Meet Me in a Dream translatoion
a few notes on my translations of Meet Me In a Dream:
stories
(with links to translation, if available)