There it was, in a tiny section of (Big American Chain Bookstore) in the San Francisco Bay Area: the first six volumes of a series I'd never heard of, in Japanese, priced at more than twice the average of the translated volumes. But I couldn't resist. All right, so the back art may have, er, interested me. So I bit my tongue heavily and opened my wallet.
A little web research found that Tamascans was scanlating this series, but they'd barely gotten into Volume 2. But looking at the inscrutable chapters to the end of Volume 6 uncovered one definite fact: Volume 6 ended in a genuine cliffhanger. I had to find out what happened next!
More research uncovered Kinokuniya, one of the oldest booksellers in Japan, and revealed that Kinokuniya had not one but two stores in the San Francisco Bay Area: One in the Japan Town Center in San Francisco, and another in an obscure mall called the Strawberry Plaza in San Jose. Soon I had four more volumes in hand, including Volume 7. Up until then, I had only translated here and there, except for the final chapter of Volume 6. I found that all of Volume 7 except for one "Special Lesson" was part of this new story arc, a much grimmer one than anything before. In fact, Volume 7 ends in another cliffhanger, and the arc continues into Volume 8. I translated all of this to the best of my ability, taking a long time.
And then...Something unfortunate happened which I will not explain further, except that I lost all my volumes, all my resources, leaving only what I remembered (not much, and less of that correctly.)
I replaced my physical resources after a rough patch, but Real World concerns took precedence for awhile. My girlfriend was basically crippled until her hip operation, and recovery from that took some time. With Tamascans slowly but surely working forward, I did no work on re-translating what I'd done before. When I got serious about deciphering some more, I did a much later arc, the trip to Hokkaido (mostly Volume 15.)
My first full-fledged scanlation was of a shorter arc beginning the next volume. It interested me because Suwahara, the very frightening man introduced in Volume 7, returned, and there was an even bigger surprise: someone thought to be dead, wasn't. I posted this at Delta Anime Torrents to rousing...silence. Not one peep of feedback. My glorious, carefully cleaned 400dpi scanlations seemed totally unappreciated. Ah, well, there was still Tamascans, faithfully...
Well, maybe not so faithfully. The translator for SOWB quit after seventeen chapters, not even finishing out his current story arc. They didn't seem interested in my own efforts; I guess it would have soiled their purity, or some such. Apparently they thought they shouldn't even get to the end of Volume 3.
And then Manga Fox came to the rescue. After waiting for almost a year for Mangavolume to allow new series in, I've gotten seventeen more chapters up on Manga Fox in not that many weeks. I doubt I can keep up this blistering pace, but allow me to gloat. I don't get a lot of chances to gloat. The first thirty-four Lessons of Mizushō are now available in translation, good or not-so-good, bringing the saga into the middle of Volume 4.
Manga Fox isn't quite perfect, though; you can only post pictures and make posts on their forums, which never stay up very long. This blog should allow for more comment, some of it even interesting.
BTW, my Kinokuniya sells the volumes at seven bucks each, less than a third of what (Big American Chain Bookstore ) was charging.
Sazae-san
Apropos of nothing in Mizushō, on my last trip to Kinokuniya I got several of Kodansha's bilingual manga, incuding Volume 1 of Sazae-san, one of the most beloved and long-running manga series of all time. Sazae-san started way back in 1949, picturing life in a still-occupied Japan with rationing and lots of wandering American soldiers. Sazae hasn't acquired a husband or children yet, but she's already taking care of a lot of people even if they don't think they need taking care of.
My girlfriend thinks she looks like Olive Oyl, and I guess there is a slight resemblance in the way the faces are drawn, though Sazae is more of a full-figured gal (as the rather tight dresses she often wore in 1949 show.)
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