Been a pretty busy past several weeks for me! I finished level 60 of WK, wrote a whole novella of a post about it, fell behind on my translations, got caught up on my translations, started a new translation project, finished a book in Spanish, and also somehow managed to read a little bit more of Read Real Japanese Essays?
But, well, here we are, at the end of the challenge. Here’s my final score:
| Apr | 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 13 | |||||||
| Week 14 | |||||||
| Week 15 | |||||||
| Week 16 | |||||||
| Week 17 |
| May | 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 18 | |||||||
| Week 19 | |||||||
| Week 20 | |||||||
| Week 21 | |||||||
| Week 22 |
= Japanese
= Japanese and Spanish
As far as my Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling translations go, I translated their experimental May 1 Inspiration show, the May 5 Korakuen Hall show (part 2), the May 13 VOD show, and the May 20 show.
Here’s a photo from a show that I did not do a translation for:
This is Yoshihiko (yes, he’s a doll) suplexing Shoko Nakajima (here’s a video of it) in Hyper Misao’s crazy ambitious produce show, HYPE!, which happened on May 25, and which is one of my favorite wrestling shows of all time. The main event of that show really pushed the boundaries of what a wrestling show can be (and pushed the limits of my very poor listening comprehension, haha), though it’s impossible to succinctly summarize.
As a translation task, though, it was pretty far beyond me. Here’s a summary of it written by another fan. Needless to say, there was way, way too much dialogue, and very little of it was transcribed, haha, so there wasn’t much I could really do beyond what that summary contains.
I composed a tweet in Japanese afterward because I wanted to thank Misao (and Mahiro Kiryu) for doing such an amazing job with that show. It actually received a fair number of likes from Japanese fans, too, in addition to those two wrestlers, which made me happy.
I’m currently still a show behind, even with having skipped translating Misao’s produce show, but I’m hoping to be caught up soon, haha.
I also finished the second essay in Read Real Japanese Essays, which was written by 酒井順子 and titled 電車の中で若者に注意. I also didn’t have much trouble reading this one! Always a pleasant surprise. I’m trying to pick up the pace with this book a little bit so that I have a better chance of accomplishing the reading goals I set last year.
As far as reading in Spanish goes, I finished the novel Cantoras! I have a lot of thoughts about it, which I'll put under a cut (warning for major book spoilers and depressing topics)
I thought the book was decent, but the main thing that I personally had an issue with was what happened to Malena. Her part near the end about the Nazi conversion therapy clinic was super depressing and tough to read about, which is fine, but I really wish that her story hadn’t ended with her committing suicide. Part of it was poor timing on my part; I just so happened to get to that part of the story the night I watched the third Hana Kimura Memorial Show, so I was really, really not receptive to a fictional story about suicide after spending hours thinking about Hana Kimura’s very real suicide. So Malena killing herself caught me off guard in the worst possible way.
I had a bad feeling about some things hinted at earlier in the book, like how she had mysteriously managed to acquire the rest of the money they needed to buy the house and then wouldn’t tell the others how she’d gotten it, and then they had gone to that bar and one of the patrons “mistook” her for a prostitute he’d seen. That gave me a pretty good theory for how she’d gotten the money, and I was really bummed to be right about that one (not that sex work is bad, but I don’t like to read about lesbians being forced to have sex with men in order to get money to survive).
It was also frustrating for me as someone who has myself struggled a lot to learn how to open up to people seeing a character like Malena be there so much for Romina without Romina trying at all to be there for Malena in that same way. She totally took advantage of her emotionally and let Malena bear all of Romina’s burdens without Romina making any effort to bear any of Malena’s. And then the way Romina ended their relationship super suddenly because she suddenly fell deep in lust with this artist, and that relationship made her feel an incredible passion that she had never felt with Malena… That part really sucked to read as an asexual lesbian, both in the sense that I can never understand or empathize with that sort of character motivation that Romina displayed there, and also in the sense that in some ways, that sort of thing is my worst fear, I guess. That I’ll get into a relationship with someone and then get dropped suddenly when the other person finds someone else who can give them what I can’t.
I think I understand what the author was trying to do with Malena’s role in the story; it was just especially crushing for me, personally, to read. I don’t know if I would have picked up the book if I had known she was going to die like that.
But anyway…
Since the reading challenge is wrapping up, I’m going to be switching gears to listening for the off-month, so I guess expect to see me posting over in the listen every day challenge for June?