All right, I'll actually put a little something up. Here's the work I did on the first three pages of Lesson 38. I know, I know, I should have started on Lesson 35, but, honestly, I opened the wrong folder and before I knew it I'd started working on it and I just had to finish it as best I could for some reason. What could it have been?

Lesson 38

片っぱしから！

Katapposhikara!

片っ端から 【かたっぱしから】 (adv) absolutely every little bit; everything from A to Z

So of course I translated it:

Why? It's an old Japanese proverb, basically saying the same thing as "When it rains, it pours." Just when Tanabe doesn't think his life could get worse, it does, big-time.

Page 1

Box Text: 歌舞伎町・某ヘルス店内――

Kabukichou - bou herusu tennai――

Kabukicho - A certain sex club――

Customer: あぁう…

某 【それがし】 (pn,adj-no) (1) (obs) someone; (2) I;

personal pronoun

何某; 某 【なにがし; なにぼう(何某)】 (pn,adj-no) (1) certain person; certain amount; Mr So-and-so; (2) I (personal pronoun)

ヘルス (n) (1) health; (2) type of massage parlor (parlour); (P); EP

店内 【てんない】 (n,adj-no) store interior

Panel 2

Customer: 若いのにすごいテク持ってね～～

Wakai no ni sugoi teku matte ne～～

Amazing technique for one so young.

若い 【わかい】 (adj-i) young

すごい (adj) terrible; dreadful; terrific; amazing; great; wonderful; to a great extent; ; KD

テク (n) (1) (abbr) technology; (2) (sl) technique; (P); EP

Possible inflected verb or adjective: (te-form)

持つ 【もつ】 (v5t) (1) to hold; to carry; (2) to possess; (P); EP

SFX: チュッ・チュッ・チュッ・チュッ・ズズッ・パッ・バッ

Chuu! Chuu! Chuu! Chuu! Chuu! Zuzu! Pa! Ba!

Chu is the Japanese onomatopoeia for a loud kiss, so chuu! suggests a longer, louder version of the sound. A good-old-100%-American dirty comic like Cherry Poptart might render the sound effects here as Shlorp! Shlorp! Shlorp! Shlorp! Shlorp! Suuu(pop!bop!)--the last being the sound as the fellator sucks on the tip and pops it out of her lips for a moment and a breath or two. Here, decades of field research definitely does count in my favor!

Fuzoku Girl: ふぉうお。（ふりがな：どーも）

Fuo ou (The furigana spell out "Doumou" which means that the girl wanted to say that but it came out another way because her mouth is full.)

Panel 3

ねェ、本番やらしてよ。お金なら私うしさ。

Nee, honban yasashite yo. O-kane nara watashi ushisa. Neh, for the real thing. How much money would I need? [It is not clear who is speaking. Watashi usually means a woman is speaking, but males can use it too, especially when trying to be polite and/or formal. So it might also be the Fuzoku girl saying something like "Now, about the real thing--I will need more money."

Fuzoku girl: ダメです～～罰金100万円ですよ～～

Dame desu~~(other stuff)

Lit. "The penalty will be...one million yen...

本番 【ほんばん】 (n) (1) performance; take; going before an audience or on-air; (2) game; season; crucial moment; (3) actual sexual intercourse (i.e. not simulated)

チェッ。CHEH!!

One million yen: This is a joke. A really top-line courtesan might get this for an evening's services (around $8-10,000) but someone working in a Kabukicho costume-play club would charge no more than a few 10,000 yen bills.

Incidentally, Japanese (and Chinese, Koreans, etc) don't have their own word for "million" because their traditional number system has an extra step: 10,000's. Except for scientists and engineers who use a lot of Western-style math, this is how the "man in the street" thinks of numbers. Given the English "million" which just about everyone will know, they will internally translate it to "One-hundred-ten-thousands." instead of "One thousand thousands" the way people raised using the Western system do.

Panel 4

SFX: ギシッ

Handwritten text under the panel: 騎乗位＿股

騎乗 【きじょう】 (n,adj-no) mount; on horseback

騎 3533 [2119:8b52] U9a0e B187 G8 S18 F1696 J1 N5222 V6761 H1834 DK1193 L1981 K1734 O2762 DO1174 MN44817 MP12.0530 E1133 IN1881 DF1911 DJ1874 DG1919 DM2000 P1-10-8 I10a8.3 Q7432.1 DR3449 Yqi2 Yji4 Wgi キ equestrian; riding on horses; counter for equestrians [Short entry for this kanji at JDIC. The "GI" means that this really complicated kanji isn't taught until the eighth grade in Japan. It's made up of the kanji 馬 for "horse" on the left, 大 ("big") on the top right, and 可 meaning "can" or "shouldn't or a number of other things on the lower right. I had no end of trouble re-discovering this one because I thought the 大 was a badly-drawn 立]

Babel renders part of this as "cowgirl." I just cannot make out one of the kanji and haven't found any compound that fits with the others.

Page 3

Panel 1

Customer: しかし実際のトコいくつなの？
How much, really?

Fuzoku Girl: ちょっとォ、女の子にトシ聞くのって反則ですよ～～

Chotto, onna no ko ni toshi

It's bad to ask when the girl is riding you.

SFX: ギシッ・ギシッ Gishi! Gishi!

Panel ２

Customer: いいじゃない、本当に若いんだろ？

Ii ja nai. Hontou ni wakai n'daro?

Whatever. But how old are you, really?

Fuzoku Girl: …フフっ (laughing)

Panel 3

Fuzoku Girl: 言っちゃおっかな～～

Iccha okka na～～

Let's say that...

Fuzoku Girl: お客さんロカタそうだし。

O-kyaku-san rokata sou dashi.

お客さん O-kyaku-san Honorable Customer

ロカタ　ろかた　路肩 (n) shoulder of a road; berm

そうだし　soudashi (probably sou da shi or sou dashi)

I really can't make this out at all.

Babel Fish gives: "The customer shoulder so it puts out,"

and Google translation renders it "They seem to be the customers shoulder"

If ROKATA is Japlish, it might mean, "The Honorable Customer is now LOCATED at the edge of the road" which in turn might mean "You're close to ejaculating" or "Where we go on from here depends on (money)" or both.

Or: "Since we've come this far..."

Panel 4

：実なね、Jitsu na ne Actually; Really

：ここだけの話――

Koko dake no hanashi――

Google: Ourselves

Babelfish: Here sufficient story

My guess: "Just between ourselves--"

Panel 5

Fuzoku Girl: 私、16歳なの。

Watashi 16 sai na no.

I am 16 years old.

Fuzoku Girl: 都立水商って知ってる

Toritsu Mizushou 'tte shitteru?

Do you know about Mizusho High?

Page 3

(Scene changes to daytime, at Mizusho High)

Reports of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

Sorry about the long absence. I'll be returning to the painful process of deciphering Mizushou soon.

If you're wondering about the avatar I use on this blog, it's an alien called a Droyne from a roleplaying game called Traveller, and it's from about thirty years ago. The Droyne are, as a rule, shy, and seldom seen. In fact, one normally can't see them at all; they have a racial psionic ability to suggest that they are not really there; they can be seen normally by only those non-Droyne they wish to be seen by. They once had much higher-level technology than they do now, but they are presently no threat. Probably.

Well...

Except that just one of them is immortal, and has all that "lost" high-technology, including the technology to destroy planets. But your chances of running into HIM are almost zero, right?

Final Volume of Toritsu Mizushou

Today I got Volume 22, the final volume of 都立水商, The School of Water Business. No spoilers for you. There are only four lessons, but they are long ones, making the final volume full-sized and full-bodied.

The End of the Series?

Shinobu Inokuma's weblog states that the Young Sunday Special #5 will be the last--the last what I'm not sure. Young Sunday ceased weekly publication some months ago, meaning either its series have had to find new homes or wind up--fast!

Volume 21 of Toritsu Mizushō came out a couple of weeks ago and it zoomed over a lot of time fast. The first two school years of Mizushō required nineteen volumes, but only two volumes into its third year, we're at a festival halfway through it (that is, the end of September--in Japan, the school year starts at the beginning of April.)  I'm not going to throw in spoilers now (for once) but it looks like my favorite character got happy-ended out of the series, another major character sports a wedding gown, and a third very major character has a reconciliation. The volume ends with a cliffhanger (of course) but the resolution of this this one just might tie up the longest-running plot thread in the entire series.

Where Have I Been?

My old hard drive crashed, and I lost all my scans, translated scripts, raw scripts, etc. This somewhat depressed me, so I did the mature thing and spent my time shooting monsters and space pirates in Pardus. I'm Hatsuho Kazami in that game, master and commander of the good ship My Pretty Bird.

At last I feel up to beginning to translate anew, having downloaded new raws from here and there.

I did upload Lesson 164 to MangaFox last night, but it ain't up yet. Maybe they're sticklers for posting chapters in order?

According to Inokuma-sensei's blog, Lesson 229 is finished. Yes, it is true that Young Sunday is no more, but many of its series continue. Volume 21 should be out by the end of this month.

Watch this space, sports fans!

Just Two Lines from Page Six

1: ……やめよう。
……Yame yō。
......Let's stop this.

2: こんな・カッコ・で・バカ・みたい・だ。
Konna kakko de baka mitai da。

I guess カッコ (kakko) would make immediate sense to someone who grew up speaking Japanese, but it's a real puzzler to me. Both Babelfish and Google translation guess it is the same as 括弧 which can mean parentheses or brackets. Neither of those seems to make much sense here, do they? Jim Breen's online Japanese dictionary comes up with quite a few more words that can be pronounce kakko. The first, 格好 or 恰好, can mean "appearance" and is probably the right meaning here, which Google renders as "I was dressed like an idiot." which can easily mean "We are dressed/look like idiots." The tense implies a completed action, so by extension I will render this way:

We're already dressed like idiots.

Perhaps Daichi is implying that they should not add icing to the cake by behaving like idiots, especially in public.

Lesson 35, Page 5 (Part One)

1: 歌舞伎町内での奉仕活動はともかく…
I guess doing public service inside Kabuki Chō is okay...

2: なんで肉じゅばんなの?
But why do we have to wear these fat suits?

3: これなら、水着姿とかの方が、なんぼかましょう!!
I thought it would be swimsuits, that would be so much better!!

4: 女子なんかまだいいよ。 なんで男だけヅラ着用なんだよ!!
You girls caught a break. Us guys have to wear these stupid wigs!!