The 🤼 プロレス thread! Learning Japanese through pro wrestling

I can’t super well make out what question the reporter asked that she’s responding to here, but I think it’s something like “Hikari said this would would be an opportunity to check whether (she is/you are) acclimated to having matches in consecutive days, what do you think about that” so she’s commenting on the three-days and how the tournament went in saying a lesson she took from it is since she doesn’t have as much experience, she’ll tell herself to work harder.
I think that’s what the ことだ is doing, is it connects with the reporter’s question like a “what did you take from this?” “がんばれ、me! that’s what I took from this.” type of thing.

。。。と思っています。
to_omotteimasu

曲者(ヒーロー) でしょ :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

I would say it’s more like “(I’m not letting my guard down but) I’m thinking I might actually be able to pull this off!” (about the tournament) (the part about not letting the guard down being from the video - まあ、油断しないですけど、).
I’d put the もういける as in the ballpark of like, “it’s going well!” / “it’s already in the bag!”

like in my last note, she’s talking about stuff’s going real well so far and she’s feeling good about it, so since feelings-wise she’s riding high she needs to make sure to not lose focus and keep winning.

Yeah, I’d transcribe the video more closely like:
初めてですよ, あんなコールの前から目の前に寝てるなんて
so it’s just another case of the periods in the summary making it look to a translator going line by line like it might be a separate thought at first!
It’s her first time seeing an opponent asleep right there in front of her before the match started.
I remember liking her visible confusion mid-pose about it too!

I could be wrong, but I think perhaps the いけた here is like. “could have gone.” Like she could have gone down the 人生の分かれ道の“あっち” by winning but didn’t. I think if she was describing the part of the road she did go down it would be こっち.

No problem!

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週刊プロレス No.2192 (from a couple weeks ago, around the first Midsummer Champions)

Giulia’s column is about her pre-match routines, which the day before includes a visit to the tanning salon, a sauna, and light training where “試合をイメージしながら作戦会議するのがメインかな(笑)。” (that’s one way of putting it - her laugh not mine).
The routine the day-of includes a sugar-free red bull, various preparations and signing/interview type stuff, and then when her music hits a deep breath and a prayer for winning and not getting majorly injured.

The headline for the return of paper streamers at the TJPW show is sweet, but a bit of an eye-roller!
「たくさんの愛に埋もれる懐かしい光景 ーー 紙テープならぬ”神”テープが飛び交う!」

Lately I feel like whenever there’s pictures from a NJPW show I didn’t watch, there’s somebody in a dog cage. this pun’s even worse

In Tanahashi’s column he talks about Forbidden Door some more, and how fans told him he first used the phrase 禁断の扉 so the show is 「禁断の扉©棚橋弘至」. He and the interviewer/co-columnist joke a bunch more like they did already before the show about exactly what state of locked or unlocked the door was in, who had the key, how much did Tanahashi fumble with it, etc. etc. These two men are for sure incapable of not running with bit material like that.
The topic turns to AEW catering, which Tanahashi compares to the bountiful buffets at Sizzler. As a New Japan catering story, Tanahashi says at dome shows his pre-match meal is always curry - he attributes his loss to Okada at the end of his record-setting IWGP Heavyweight Championship run to the fact that he had omurice before the match, despite having curry before all of the victories leading up to it…

There’s an ad for KENTA’s new book (the shilling of which while KENTA pretends to not be shilling it in the backstage interviews has been a highlight of the G1). KENTA seems like one wrestler who could probably write a good book!

In Kenoh’s column he mainly talks about a petty squabble he’s getting into with Kojima about push-ups and stuff - sounds like he’s criticizing Kojima’s push-ups and insisting he can do an absurd number himself and you can go to his youtube channel for proof or something like that. He also talks a little about how ABEMA is broadcasting both the NOAH show and the NJPW G1 Climax opening show on the same day, and NOAH is definitely going to draw more viewers (it was unusual seeing the co-promotion for both on the NOAH show).
There wasn’t really an organic way to show off my cool new useful custom emoji, alas
pain_kenoh

Kento Miyahara fighting Yuji Nagata makes for a lot of sardonic saluting and 白目’ing
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There’s a pretty cool pull-out guidebook for the G1 Climax. It has a lot of stats and stuff (including G1 records for the past three years and singles records against this year’s blockmates for all competitors), the schedule for the matches and specific highlights to look forward to for each day (it’s a bit silly but I avoided looking closely at the schedule for the last day – obviously it will become clear by the time it gets here but it’s just a little more fun I think to predict/hope for particular winners without factoring in how the last day of matches is probably going to be as suspenseful as possible).
Fun fact! Okada’s combined singles win:loss record for everyone in his block grouped together, is apparently 16:4.
There’s also a page of notes from a NJPW Strong commentator about Jonah and Tom Lawlor, going over their respective backgrounds and charms. Of Lawlor he says “さらにデニムジャケットで入場し、コスチュームもデニムのショートパンツというのも印象的で、独特な感性を匂わせる。” which I feel like is a really good way of putting it. I haven’t watched far enough yet to see Lawlor in an actual block match, but I’m oddly looking forward to it because the “theatrically takes off his denim cut-offs to reveal denim-print trunks” thing and general "filthy"ness is a good example of “not cool but confidently not cool enough it wraps back around to being kinda cool somehow.”

There’s a Great O-Khan interview, since last year he got an award from the magazine for his G1 performance despite not having a good win-loss record. As usual, he refers to himself as 余. He theatrically feigns a loss of memory about prior losses, and mentions the nickname “ゼンパイア” (as in 全敗+United Empire) to denounce it, but the interviewer says it might be more accurate than not…
He says one wrestler he hopes he would like to fight is EVIL, because United Empire would counter the various seconds from House of Torture, and “キャラクターが立ってるヤツがスゴい好きで。” to which the interviewer responds “一番キャラクターが立ってる選手が言うことじゃないですね(笑)。”
(I never have any idea what to make of O-Khan)

In the news section, I just kinda liked this odd photo of Giulia presumably mid-slap to Suzu with an out of place SLK in-frame.
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Genichiro Tenryu in his column talks about Keiji Mutoh’s announced retirement, and first off says ご苦労さん. He says after his generation there was 闘魂三銃士, and the 四天王, and with Hashimoto and Misawa dead, Kobashi and Taue retired, and Chono and Kawada not officially retired but indefinitely not wrestling either, in a sense Mutoh’s carried an entire era to the present day alone. He talks some in comparison about his feelings around his own retirement, and it sounds like he approves of the final tour approach (rather than just retiring and being done with it) because the feeling and motivation of showing up for the fans who’ve been cheering for you across the country one last time is very powerful. When he did the same he didn’t think about injuries stopping it, he just bore through the accumulation of them with bandages and painkillers to stand in the ring those last times at all costs.
He closes with 「あとね、俺は引退の時、ウチの女房から言われたんだけど、最後の試合を終えて、しっかり自分の足で歩いて、家族のもとに帰ってきてほしいって。武藤にも同じ言葉を伝えたいよ。」

I really liked this moment at Wrestle Sekigahara.

I like the double kickout composition they went with for this page in the recap of the match between Chihiro Hashimoto and 朱崇花 in Sendai Girls.

Apparently I forgot to read Mutoh’s column the first time through – glancing through to see if I missed anything interesting, he talks about experiences with championships early in his career in the NWA Florida territory – at the time, his fee was paid as a percentage of the gate, and so when Ric Flair would come to the territory as NWA champion it meant he directly got paid more since Flair’s presence drew so much of a crowd, so he came to call him フレアー様.

The WWE recaps in this column give an outsized spotlight to the Japanese wrestlers the readership might be most familiar with, so it can give sometimes an interesting look at the spectrum of roles Japanese wrestlers have in the company. Like this week, Asuka is being cool and having probably cool no holds barred matches with Becky Lynch, Shinsuke Nakamura looks to be feuding with WALTER Gunther over the IC title, Sareee is forming a very cool-sounding tag team with Meiko Satomura in NXT UK, and Akira Tozawa…


The WWE recaps have “Special thanks to WWE, Mr. Vincent K. McMahon and Mr. Paul Levesque” in the corner – I assume because the magazine doesn’t send its own photographers or anything like that. I wonder if one of those names will be gone a couple weeks from now… :eyes:

There’s an obituary for a former FMW karateka/pro-wrestler named Seishi Aoyagi. (no relation, I think, to the AJPW Aoyagis)

The short industry column is about Rina Yamashita - sounds like she’s been invited to and has been wrestling at GCW events in America and is enjoying the well-deserved international recognition as a deathmatch star.

The long industry column is an interview with important Bushiroad guy Takaaki Kidani about Stardom. He says 売り上げ is about 5培 (!) what it was when Stardom joined Bushiroad in 2019 (with a similar profit icnrease), and he attributes that success in part to effective regional advertising and use of youtube on the business side, while on the creative side Rossy Ogawa is able to apply his full 40+ years of women’s wrestling industry experience to “producing”, where before his attention was split with the financial side. (makes sense to me – the weirdly common habit of people who run wrestling companies insisting on controlling both all of the monetary and all of the creative decisions at the same time is always so strange to me)
He praises New Blood for being a mutually beneficial medium for young Stardom and non-Stardom wrestlers to gain experience from each other. He says Rossy Ogawa’s sensibilities suit the modern fast-paced environment, and they talk about Stardom’s breakneck storytelling for a bit. Honestly – I still personally have trouble conceptualizing Stardom as being especially fast-paced, but it sounds like here they’re talking about particularly how there’s defenses and unrelated important storylines happening all the way up to the 5 Star GP, and it is true I suppose come to think of it that Stardom doesn’t really operate the way NJPW does, where a tour is blocked out with tons of “Road to” shows all supporting to and building up only the main show’s matches and storylines and nothing else. Stardom feels more like it has lots of storylines with potential status quo changing developments percolating at all times and any one or couple of them can be brought forward to fill some handful of time or shows at any given time. Which personally I agree is a good thing as an audience member!
For future things they want to improve he says increasing the amount of female fans (apparently it’s starting to increase a little but women make up about 10% of the fanbase – geez, I wouldn’t have guess it was that lopsided… I suppose come to think of it if/when cheering comes back it will be harder to just think of the audience as a genderless, opinionless, supportive void) and フローバル化, both in the form of brining in 外国人選手 and Stardom wrestlers traveling elsewhere as well.

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I laughed at this, haha, what a perfect emoji! The Shoko you made is also great.

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Done with translating TJPW’s July 23 show (recap here)!

A short one this time! There was only one TPC match in this because Mizuki vs Shoko got canceled. This meant that both Pom and Suzume suddenly got a massive opportunity to have a main event singles match, which is pretty cool!

I enjoyed Pom bringing a butterfly net to her match with a hornet. Sadly, Pom’s trickery was still not enough to net (:wink:) herself the win. But it’s pretty big for Suzume to make it into the quarterfinals!

Suzume got to close out the show by herself for the first time. When she spoke live, I could feel her emotion even without being able to catch what she was saying. She said that she never knows what Pom is going to do, and her shins hurt, but she won! Next, she will fight Rika, whom she admires, and who inspired her to join TJPW. She said that this summer, she will surpass Rika Tatsumi, whom she admires so much, and then after that, she’s aiming to win the tournament.

Backstage, according to the recap (here’s the video), Suzume said: “(1回戦は)シードだったんですけど、まず1勝”. This was a little hazy for me. I think she was saying “She was seeded into the first round, but she started out with a win.”? I’m not exactly sure of the proper way to talk about tournament seeding in English, so that holds me back a little. I also wasn’t quite sure who was the subject, but considering the context, it seems to be Pom?

Suzume went on to say that Pom does unpredictable things, but she was glad that Pom showed persistence against her. She said that she joined TJPW because she admired the way that Rika fights with all of her might, and she wants to live her life like that, too. In the twitter caption, she says that if all she wanted was to live her life to the fullest, there are other ways besides pro wrestling, but she chose this path.

Then she said: “この道を選んだからこそ、この道じゃないと成し遂げられないことをしたい.” I struggled with this. Here was what I went with: “I chose it specifically because I want to do something that can only be accomplished this way.” (Or would “that can’t be done anywhere else” be better? Or are both wrong? :sweat_smile:) She says that that is defeating Rika Tatsumi.

Pom said that this was her first singles match with Suzume. Then she said, “前にタッグで負けたとき、人生終わっちゃうくらい悔しかったんです.” I think this says basically: “Before, when I lost in tag team matches, I was so frustrated, it felt like the end of my life.”?

She said that for the first time in a long time, she remembered that feeling. She says that she thinks this experience was absolutely essential, so “Pom-chan’s 2022 summer” will surely become a great memory.

The twitter caption elaborates a little more. She mentions that she thought it would be cool for her to win her first ever singles main event. (Pom actually has singles match victories over both Yuka and Rika, but let’s just say they weren’t standard matches, haha. They’re probably just about the only shoot matches in pro wrestling.)

The recap also points out that Pom and Rika faced each other in the TJPW Inspiration show on April 10, which I believe I talked about in here. The upcoming cup match would be a tough match for Suzume to win, but maybe she’ll fare better this time…

The other match of consequence on this show was the replacement match for Shoko vs Mizuki, which was Shoko and Yuka vs Miu and Rika. I really loved this one! All four of them were really at their best. I feel like when Yuka and Shoko tag together, they have a particular kind of energy where they’re wrestling together but sort of competing with each other at the same time. Though in a way that makes them stronger as a team, not weaker.

I was convinced it was going to end in a draw, but Shoko managed to pull off the win at the very end, pinning Miu with less than a minute left on the clock. Tough loss for Miu! It’s her second one in a short period of time (after she took the pin in the number one contender 4way at CyberFest).

I think I was able to understand this part of the recap, but was a little confused because I couldn’t double-check it because no one else mentioned this in English. Here’s the last part of the match recap: “20分時間切れギリギリで中島がロコモーション式ノーザンライト・スープレックス・ホールドを約1年ぶりに繰り出して渡辺から勝利.” Here was my translation: “just before the 20 minute time limit, Nakajima executed a locomotion-style Northern Lights Suplex for the first time in about a year, pulling off the victory over Watanabe.”

I was a little confused over what the 年ぶり part was referring to (the move? the win over Miu?), and I’d also never heard of a locomotion-style move before. But I commonly learn new wrestling things, haha. I’m not sure if this is exactly how it would be translated in English, but google seemed to show some precedent.

After the match, Shoko said (embellishing with the twitter caption) that she thinks Mizuki is even more disappointed than she is (over losing by forfeit). She says that if she wants to call herself the best in TJPW, she thinks Mizuki is one of the opponents she has to defeat. Shoko won by forfeit, so she definitely wants to face her one-on-one when they get the chance. Next she has Miu, who might be the opponent she doesn’t want to lose to the most right now. She’s bracing herself for the challenge.

Miu said that she wanted this to be the summer of surpassing their senpais. She thinks the young wrestlers have to work hard to achieve results here, so even though she’s disappointed today, she’s going to do her best in order to surpass Shoko.

Rika’s comment was a little confusing. She said: “私も対戦相手が鈴芽になったんですけど、大きい羽が生えたばっかりだけど、むしり取って、その先の決勝で会おうよ”. I translated this as: “My opponent is Suzume, but even though she just finished growing bigger wings, I’m going to tear them off, and we’ll meet in the finals at some point down the road.”

I’m pretty sure the bigger wings refer to the new wings on Suzume’s gear, which are longer than the old ones. Rika also tore one of her wings off in their last singles match, haha. But enough of the wording in the comment was tricky, I wasn’t entirely confident. According to the recap, Rika also mentioned that she’s going to meet Miu, her tag partner, in the finals.

And that’s all for this show!

Next show will decide the semi-finals. Then the four names will be shuffled. My friends and I have debated whether this is or is not a truly random draw, haha. I guess we’ll have to see how they do the draw this year, and if there’s an easy way to work it like they did the draw for the tournament bracket…

I’m torn between rooting for Miu to win, or rooting for Shoko to go all the way and nominate Mizuki for her opponent, so that match will be extra tense for me… For the other matches, I’m hoping for some upsets, haha. I’ll be rooting for Nao, Hikari, and Suzume :blush:.

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She’s talking about herself - it’s shuffled around a quite a bit in the transcript (the video has “まずトーナメント1勝 (bow), シードだったんですけど、私のトーナメント始まりました!”) so I suspect she didn’t organize her thoughts into fully coherent grammar, but she’s celebrating her first victory while acknowledging her favorable seed in the tournament meant she got a bye in the first round.

“この道を選んだからこそ” would be more like “specifically because I chose this path”.
She’s saying she chose this path of pro wrestling and because she’s chosen it, she wants to accomplish things that wouldn’t be possible on any other path.

Yeah roughly – in the video it’s more clear I think that she’s talking specifically about past losses to Suzume (which are in tag matches since this was their first singles match), and saying that while other losses are a bummer too of course, those were especially vexing losses, like “人生終わっちゃう世界バーンってぐらい” with the “バーン” being my attempt at transcribing an sfx and sort of like, “to heck with it” hand gesture she did.
I would say it’s more in a teenager “ugh my life is over!” sense than anything more grim, to be clear! Like, the gist in the video is it was so frustrating she was saying “[stuff you might say when really frustrated].”

I would say your translation is correct – the “Xを約1年ぶりに繰り出して” construction would mean that the 1年ぶりに would refer to that clause, so yeah, it sounds like Shoko used that ロコモーション式ノーザンライト・スープレックス・ホールド for the first time in about a year (and she won with it).

From googling the move name, looks like ロコモーション式 refers to hitting the suplex and rolling right into another suplex (and so on potentially from there)! (like here you can hear one commentator say, when Natsupoi doesn’t bridge the first suplex so it can’t be a ホールド, “お!ジャーマンじゃない!” and then as she transitions into suplex #2, the other commentator says “ロコモーション式です!”)
Fun name!
I don’t know what the best name would be in English - maybe “Locomotion” in the context of a Japanese wrestler’s move to match their name, and just “rolling” or something outside of that context.

Yep! I agree with your interpretation.
One minor thing I’d point out is that “at some point down the road” is much more definite than that! For that part, she’s talking to Watanabe, and the “その先” is just, like, “after that.”
In the video she turns to Watanabe and says “その先の決勝で会おうよ” and gives her a kind of awkward supportive slap on the shoulder, which leads to laughter and more kind of awkward shoulder grabbing, and they resolve to meet specifically in the finals of the tournament (shuffling of the semifinals notwithstanding)
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With their positions in the tournament, “その先の決勝で会おうよ” is a bit of a mix of support, pressure, and threat, after all!

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Posting something a little bit different this time. Since I’m (very temporarily) caught up on the TJPW translations, I ended up reading the NJPW English book for my daily reading! I very much read extensively and not intensively, and did a lot of skimming over details I didn’t really care about, but I got through the first, uh, 64 pages?

It’s actually pretty cool how much I was able to read! I was a little bit floored, honestly :sweat_smile:. I guess all of that Anki time has really paid off. I definitely don’t have nearly this level of fluency with non-wrestling-related Japanese.

The book starts with advice on where to start reading depending on your level of English skill. The entry level is 道場生 level, which I guess is like dojo student? Then beginner is young lion, intermediate is 中堅 (I looked at this word and was like “is this basically midcarder?” the answer seems to be yes), and advanced is champion.

Obviously, if you’re coming at it from the opposite language direction, the hardest stuff is the easiest, and the easiest stuff is the hardest. One day, I aspire to reach 道場生レベル :triumph:.

I was today years old when I learned that it’s called a figure 4 because it looks like the number 4. In hindsight, I’m not sure where I thought the name came from otherwise :sweat_smile:.

I also learned that apparently 本 is the counter used for belts! There are 10本 in NJPW.

I laughed at the translators having to figure out what to do with names like Zack’s finisher, Orienteering With Napalm Death. They also mentioned that he calls himself “soy boy”, but did not explain what that means. Fair.

I didn’t know that Ryu Lee’s nickname was “Super Powered Muscle Car.” I thought it was funny how his biography section mentions his brothers, then sums up the highlights of his CMLL career, then casually mentions that he changed his name in 2019. I’m sure that happened for no particular reason. It also says that he has a mutually acknowledged rival relationship with Hiromu, which is one way to put it and leave out all of the actual interesting bits.

It was really funny how the book had to clarify that the “daddy” in Chris Dickinson’s nickname “Dirty Daddy” specifically means a sexually attractive man.

I thought it was interesting that it translated “gonzo” as both “異常” and “でたらめ”. I guess that does make sense!

I wasn’t exactly fond of the decision they made with Karl Fredericks’ finisher, Manifest Destiny. They just translated the words literally. Which, yeah, they don’t exactly have a lot of character space here, but I feel like there’s an important connotation to this one, especially since Karl is making an intentional statement by using that move as someone who’s Native…

Hangman didn’t have much in his description, because he basically did nothing while he was in NJPW, but I thought it was a neat touch that they described him as leaving NJPW in January 2019 together with Kenny Omega and others.

I also learned that the Kamigoye was called the 人でなしニー at first, which one of my friends informed me was what Murata called it when Kota used it for the first time.

I laughed at Kenta’s description mentioning that the Go 2 Sleep is his original move, and then the line after that just says that AEW’s CM Punk also uses it.

naitoyikes naito_beer

They talk about Makabe entering to Immigrant Song and translate the song title, but conveniently leave out that they have to dub over it every time because they don’t actually have the rights to use it.

I laughed at the last line of Tenzan’s bio, which says that in recent years, he has also been active in the role of Master Wato’s diva (?). The question mark is present in the actual Japanese description.

Kojima’s description mentions his love of bread, and him expressing his thoughts in English on twitter as the Bread Club, and how he has lots of fans in the English speaking world as well. All true!

I didn’t catch the full context for this because I didn’t bother to look up the unknown kanji in the sentence, but it mentioned “チビ虎” for Tiger Mask. Chibi tiger… that’s so cute.

Ah, Goto has challenged for the IWGP belt 8 times, and they all ended in failure…

They specifically mentioned Sanada’s matches with Zack, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was saying about them despite knowing all the kanji: “ザック・セイバーjr.とのグラウンド中心の戦いは、名勝負数え歌の呼び声も高い.” One of my friends explained that 呼び声が高い means famous/widely spoken of/highly acclaimed, and apparently 名勝負数え歌/唄 was a phrase used to describe the chemistry between Fujinami and Chono, who had some matches against each other in the 90s and early 2000s, which were all highly praised at the time.

So this line was saying that ZSJ and Sanada’s mat based-matches are acclaimed as great matches with a chemistry the likes of Fujinami/Chono. (I mostly remember Zack/Sanada matches for being very, very popular with my gay male friends, but I guess that’s one way to describe their appeal :sweat_smile:).

They translated El Desperado’s finisher, El Pinche Loco, but censored it: "クソキチ〇イ’. It took me a bit to figure out what they were censoring, but I’m pretty sure it was “クソキチガイ” (which I understood thanks to WK teaching that unfortunate word…). This book is testing my knowledge of inappropriate words in three languages :sweat_smile: :sweat:.

It was interesting to me that they censored キチガイ and not クソ. if this was english, I feel like it would be the other way around… When I mentioned this, my friend said that apparently they used that word in the Ibushi vs Nakamura VTR, back in the day, which is a rather unfortunate decision… :pensive:.

When talking about Dick Togo’s nickname, they define “spoiler” as “楽しみを台無しにする”, literally spoiling the fun. I always thought of what he does as in spoiling the match, but I guess that’s also spoiling the fun, haha.

It was interesting to me that they defined “heat” in terms of Jado’s “Master Heater” nickname as, well, “heat” in the wrestling sense. Obviously that was my first thought when I heard his name, but it seemed like a mildly insider-y term, so I wasn’t quite sure if that was the intended meaning. They define “master heater” as essentially a genius at irritating the audience.

The next section in the book is a few interviews with wrestlers, in parallel text format, but I think I’m going to skip this section for now and read the glossary next :blush:.

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I’m glad you’re enjoying the book! And congratulations on the surprise of how much you’re able to read - although it’s no surprise to me :sweat_smile: with all those translations I’m sure it’ll catch you off guard how much you improve from it - especially with wrestling stuff!

I was kinda curious – it looks like that bit is talking about Tiger Mask’s 子煩悩ness, as his kid (the “チビ虎”) shows up frequently in his social media posts, like this one, with his own little mask.
Cute!

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Some wrestling show impressions:

TJPW 東京プリンセスカップ

I’ve been enjoying the princess cup! The lack of commentary is too bad, and so I’ve watched them with a mix of all of my different modes - directly, while doing anki, and while working. But TJPW has a lot of wrestlers who are fun to watch even when they aren’t at the top of the card (like Raku’s lullabies or the Hyper Misao shenanigan of the day are consistently fun - I enjoyed Misao forming a sentai-style ranger team, for example) so it was always a good time, and I have to keep up with the translations to help, after all!


NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 1 (from 2007)

Probably the weirdest bit of minor pro wrestling trivia is that the “Wrestle Kingdom” name for the January 4th show NJPW holds every year was taken directly from an Xbox 360 game made by Yuke’s, the company that made a bunch of WWE games and also is making the upcoming AEW: Fight Forever game, because Yuke’s owned NJPW for a bit there. Very weird to imagine from the state of NJPW nowadays.

Similarly – I wouldn’t have guessed from modern shows how common interpromotional shows were at the Tokyo Dome around this time. This one is built entirely around NJPW vs. AJPW, and I found it at least quite a bit more enjoyable for me than the previous year’s NJPW vs. indie, mainly because it felt a lot more unified and the booking made more sense (and Brock Lesnar is nowhere to be seen). It’s also unexpectedly relevant to at least current-day AJPW, as Voodoo Murders style Suwama shows up here (with a lot of WM in general on the card).

Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Toshiaki Kawada I don’t think was as great as it sounds like it could have been from those two participants, but I thought it got across well the danger of Kawada’s kicks and Nakamura’s sudden submissions.

Minoru Suzuki vs. Yuji Nagata for the Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship was really good! It was cool to see Suzuki in top form (which is to say – exactly like he is now but a little plumper and with the full like, crest of hair and spirals style that only he can pull off). They spend a while blading at the start but it doesn’t get nearly as bad as Nagata/Sasaki and while at first I thought it wasn’t as intense of a match as I’m used to from current-day Suzuki… that impression definitely changed by the end!

Hiroshi Tanahashi’s IWGP title defense was against an AJPW guy I don’t think I’d ever heard of, 太陽ケア, who at first I was unfairly biased against because of that. But I thought he played the dominant foil for Tanahashi quite well! Tana really shone as a fantastic babyface with plenty of moments tricking me into thinking he might not persevere and then getting me to cheer as he did just that.

The main event, rather than either of the heavyweight matches, is a “dream tag match” between Tencozy and Mutoh/Chono, which I didn’t necessarily have the background to appreciate as much but provided a good opportunity for Mutoh and Chono to memorialize Hashimoto at the end (and for Tenzan to lose again).

One other highlight was getting to see Milano Collection A.T. wrestle! I think he’s a great color commentator, and from this brief impression it seems like he was a talented wrestler too! He did the Paradise Lock with far more theatrics and aplomb than I’ve ever seen from SANADA…

I haven’t gotten around to reading the 2007 chapter of the Nakamura biography, and Wrestle Kingdom II is barely on NJPW World because it’s a co-promotion with TNA of all things! So although it would be kind of fun to watch lots/all of the “Wrestle Kingdoms”… we’ll see. I suppose there’s no rush, in any case.


STARDOM in SHOWCASE vol.1

What an odd show! This felt like… a year’s worth of King of Pro-Wrestling trophy matches compressed into one card.

One major disappointment is they went with the maximum copyright-avoidance style of VOD for the Stardom World version of the show, with wrestler entrances and celebrations cut out except for the rumble. That sucks! From the air horns and what little could be heard – it sounds like they weren’t using anyone’s regular entrance music? Which might be the reason? I would be curious how much additional novelty vibe would be conveyed if I’d been watching the PPV version. I imagine there’d be at least SOME context for stuff like the airhorns.

My favorite match was definitely the Falls Count Anywhere match! I was curious if they would acknowledge the elephant in the room…
image
… and boy did they! The commentary team had a lot of fun by referring to Koguma as just くま and the inflatable bouncy castle elephant as just ぞう, and well – sometimes pro-wrestling is high stakes emotional fights, and sometimes it’s a wrestler and a bear magically swapping clothes inside of a giant elephant.

Mayu Iwatani was the guest commentator for the later matches, and she was a fantastic choice because she’s a very receptive audience! She laughed A LOT when Koguma tripped trying to jump down the big inflatable slide, and I also liked the commentators explaining the nuances of “I quit” to her during the I Quit match.

Speaking of the I Quit match, this and the other more violent stipulations could probably have been a lot more intense on a less novelty-ish show, but it was still pretty fun! I’m glad for the good excuse to make better note of Kurumi Hiiragi’s name (and “Holly Walnut” is a memorable one, after all!), and an I Quit match is heavily reliant on how gutturally the babyface can scream that they aren’t quitting yet… so Syuri is a great fit!

Similarly the hardcore match was fun - I also like a lot Suzu’s “arrivederci! mata na!” in the backstage comments.

The skeleton turned out to be Yuu! I recognized her from shupro, as her tag team with Chihiro Hashimoto, チーム200kg, seems lauded, although I never mentioned them much in my summaries (partly since not watching the promotions they were in, I was never sure at a glance how crassly or not crassly the weight theme of the team was handled). They also currently hold the tag team belts in Sendai Girls as of the last magazine I recapped, so it was a total surprise to me when the 謎の死神 was her! I don’t know yet if it’s a one-off, the start of her being signed to Stardom, or guest appearances, or what, but my impression is she’d be a very cool addition in whichever slot.
I also somehow appreciate Stardom making “dress up in a horror monster costume and emotionally and physically torture Stardom wrestlers, then when you debut take it off and never do anything like that again because it was completely out of character and implausible for you to have been the one doing it in the first place” like, the orthodox way for a surprise wrestler to join the company. I don’t think it’s good storytelling… but I do think it’s very funny! My personal head canon is it will keep happening because when people want advice on joining Stardom they go for advice on how to make a good first impression from a famously successful ship-jumper… and end up running with Giulia’s unintentionally terrible communication advice.

The “cosmic rules” match was the kind of thing I would have absolutely hated knowing it was coming from the WWE writers room… Stardom retains at least a little bit of the benefit of the doubt from me that the premise and/or details could have come from the wrestlers themselves, but it was still very juvenile. I suppose one positive thing to say about Pheremones in contrast is they don’t pretend like professional wrestling isn’t already a pretty inherently risque activity. Teasing stuff like wet t-shirts and towels just seems sort of childish when we’re already watching mostly naked people be physically and emotionally intimate with each other… but whatever.

One thing I’ll say as a definite positive – I only realized after the fact that this and MidSummer Champions were Stardom running the same venue two days in a row! I think I actually liked this approach much much more than a 2-day show where both days have basically the exact same kind of card. It gave different wrestlers a chance to shine on both days and I think probably gave for example Syuri a bit of a break (although that’s weird to say about an I Quit match) instead of having intense championship matches back to back.
Despite the flaws here, I would like to see them do this again, I think! With some tweaks and polish it could be a great novelty like that cage match show ended up being, or it could just keep being a pretty fun grab bag.


ガンバレ☆プロレス WRESTLE SEKIGAHARA

I don’t know anything about Ganbare (I guess they’re a DDT-affiliated promotion with an emphasis on working with other promotions?) but I watched this because I like the name and the ads made it look pretty cool.

I enjoyed the show! I bet if I were a Ganbare fan I would have loved it. I was especially impressed by both tag teams. Yuuri also seemed cool and “Lingerie Mutoh” was a surprisingly faithful impersonation, albeit with obligatory knee jokes and uh, lingerie. I also enjoyed Manase/Sayaka, and thought the Suzuki match was a really fun classic style Minoru Suzuki match, complete with audience seating disruption and hassling of young wrestlers at ringside.

Yumehito Imanari vs. Ken Ohka in the main event seemed like it would have been super cathartic and good if I’d been following those wrestlers previously - the moment I highlighted in the last recap was touching. I only knew Ohka as “guy in Ganbare posters” and Imanari from the magazines as “pervert movie director from Pheremones and the Great Space War” (the latter of which I was wrong about – turns out I was conflating him with, in true Michinoku Pro fashion, a nude Joaquin Phoenix style Joker who also carried a camera around). So it was interesting to see him in a more serious and wholesome light.


Stardom MidSummer Champions 2022 in NAGOYA

I really enjoyed this show! Going in, Syuri vs. Tam Nakano is a definite headliner for Stardom right now, and with Tam’s recent momentum from the Natsupoi thing, it was going to be Syuri’s riskiest title defense match to-date, and so it made the match very exciting. And Syuri retained! But I believe Tam that this is the beginning of the end for the 朱世界… I wonder if this means Tam will win the 5 Star GP and challenge again more successfully, or if that would be too similar to how Hayashishita/Syuri played out?

The tag title match I also thought was super enjoyable, and the Artist of Stardom match too! It’s fun to hear people say “スパパパパーン” so much and I love the thing that team does where they chain the belts together. Kashima snuck up on me… she was in the background for a while, but she’s really entertaining. And I always forget she does a shoryuken until she hits it again.

Saya Iida was the guest commentator! She’s been speaking in a very confident superhero-ish register recently in promos, which I think is fun, and she wasn’t doing that here but she acquitted herself well for a first time commentating. They had some fun joking about “Super Strong Stardom Machine” from the rumble the previous day.


I saw on twitter Thekla’s out of the 5 Star GP to recover from injury (replaced by Momo Kogo who should be good, but still too bad!) and Suzu and Kurumi are missing a Prominence show due to COVID so we’ll see how all these round robins go huh :grimacing:
The N-1 Victory blocks were announced though, and I thought they looked pretty good. I’m maybe most curious about Hideki Suzuki’s matches - he seems like someone who it would be interesting to see different wrestlers try to deal with in singles matches. I was surprised during the announcement no one had participated in more than 4 of those tournaments… until I realized they were only counting the ones under the “N-1 Victory” name, which only started in 2019…

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週刊プロレス No.2193 (from a couple of weeks ago)

In Naito’s column he talks about getting to do commentary and a ceremonial pitch for some Hiroshima Carp games – apparently it’s his first promotional type event like this since turning Ingobernables, probably because at first after that he was mainly a heel and in the pandemic era there’ve been fewer of those events anyway.
Asked about doing commentary for wrestling shows, he says he’s always turned that down but doesn’t really quite know why, but the reason he settles on is he just wants to leave shows when his matches are done. He cites Shingo Takagi as a wrestler he’s impressed by when doing commentary, and when he commentates he’s less talkative in the locker room which is a plus for Naito.

Kenoh in his column talks about getting called out by the returning-from-cancer Fujita “Junior” Hayato, and praises him but complains that on the cover of the magazine last week they rearranged Hayato’s words! Hayato called out Kenoh and Hiromu in that order… but on the cover they described it as calling out Hiromu and Kenoh. Kenoh suspects “ライオンマークの見えない圧力” may be at play!

Looks like the shupro photographer caught the 白目 the AJPW cameras missed which I complained about!


(of course, even though they didn’t show his face I knew what it looked like since I’ve seen Nagata matches before, so it’s not a particularly big deal, but hey)

Giulia’s column is particularly fun this week, as she brings her new protégé and DDM rookie Mai Sakurai (that’s one of those names that sounds especially weird to me for some reason when I swap it to follow English conventions) to meet her ”師匠”, Hideki Suzuki for special training!
At the start she fires back at Suzuki’s joke about her a while back that I didn’t super understand at the time and still don’t necessarily - but I think she’s saying Suzuki complained Giulia never buys meals or lends him money, and she’s like “yeah duh of course I wouldn’t” but to avoid a 「ジュリアケチ」impression she cajoled Suzuki into this by offering food in return for 師匠 work.
Anyway, Giulia says again that Mai is very “マジメ” which is both good and bad for pro wrestling, and something she’s been telling her is a point to improve is ad-libbing ability and reading the crowd, a “試合のボキャブラリー”. (boy there’s an English word that doesn’t make it through Japanese unscathed)
So one of the exercises Suzuki did was he asked Mai what weapons she would bring to a hardcore match like the one in Nagoya – and her first answer was “a bat” but he pressed her for more interesting answers from “a baton”, “a badminton shuttlecock”, all the way to zany answers like “a fishing boat.”
They also worked on visualizing the 5 Star GP which Mai will be in, and at first when asked her expectations she just said she just wanted to beat Unagi, but Suzuki insisted she aim higher and the settled-on goal record was 10:2 with the 2 losses being AZM and Himeka (and the wins including Syuri, Tam, Utami…). Suzuki asked as an “お師匠の禅問答”: 「10勝2敗、ダメだったらどうする?」
and Mai answered 「土下座します、鈴木さんとジュリアさんと一緒に!」 and Giulia doesn’t understand why she got roped into the potential dogeza but Mai will just have to meet the goal and Gilua will have to win her own block with 11:1! (lol I’ll be rooting for Mai and all but now I will definitely be looking forward to the group dogeza).
It sounds like she also learned moves like the “超実戦的エルボースマッシュ.” Sounds like a productive session! Why would WWE fire this valuable お師匠? other than the language barrier and major style and principles clash


Side note, but one thing I really like about (Stardom’s) units is how they inform wrestlers’ 成長 stories – whether or not it’s really so separate behind the scenes, as a character Mai’s path will always be informed by this influence from Giulia (and by the transitive property Suzuki I suppose) thanks to being in DDM in a way completely different from each of the other wrestlers in Stardom early on in their career who each similarly have their own storyline mentors. (I suppose come to think of it what I’m describing is similar to how NJPW’s excursions work? I wonder if this would be happening the same way if travel were easier – and I wonder if NJPW factions would feel more meaningful if wrestlers didn’t just come back to join them fully formed)

There’s a big feature on Saori Anou, the newly crowned Ice Infinity champion. In the interview it talks about her freelancing and her winning the championship and getting front cover of the magazine. I don’t have enough knowledge of her background or the surrounding context to understand all of the interview fully, but it sounds like she was in the first class of Actwres Girls and is 31 with a 7 year career, and got some flak early on for working with other promotions or something, so it sounds like the freelancer spirit is strong. The interviewer asks her about Stardom, since she’s freelancing and all, and she gives dodging answers of the “not announcing anything and not burning any bridges either” type including this first for me in these interview transcripts:


There’s a rundown of past important matches of hers, and a listing of her signature moves, including this amusingly named エクソシスト and her finisher, the interesting looking タンタンドル
image

There’s comments included as well from her “プロレスの父” Yumiko Hotta and her “プロレスの母” Mayumi Ozaki, who are both very complementary.
Hey, I recognize that photoshoot!

The history column is pretty interesting - it talks about how in the 70s, any of the three major American championships (NWA, AWA, WWWF) having a title change was big news to the Japanese wrestling industry and would ignite speculation about which of the three major Japanese promotions (新日本、全日本、国際) the new champion would be affiliated with if/when they came to Japan. The columnist says this died out in 84 along with McMahon jr. and WWF conquering the American market. It was said 「アメリカのプロレスがクシャミをすれば、日本のプロレスは風邪をひく」but over time the Japanese industry just built up an immunity.
The closing sentence is I think true on multiple different levels: “プロレスを長く愛するためには、「免疫」がないとシンドイものである。”

In the Champ Talk column, Saki Kashima talks about the Artist of Stardom Championship. The most interesting tidbit is she says the “すぱぱぱぱーん” phrase for her 起死回生 that’s popular recently to the point that she’s thinking of using it as the official name for the move, came from a game on the Stardom show on Samurai TV, 煌めく☆まるごとスターダム, where she had to write a 短歌 and came up with it as the onomatopoeia for the 起死回生 to fit the poem she had in mind. I suppose that’s an easy way to remember exactly how many ぱ’s are in it!
I’ll just reiterate what I said earlier today and say this Artist team is cool and I like the chain thing they do with the belts.

Looks like Suzu Suzuki won the Catch the WAVE 2022 tournament! Including the “Regina di wave” championship and 100万円! She says she will spend the latter on 「焼肉、車、デスマッチアイテムいっぱい!」
(I always wonder if wrestlers get to actually keep prize money like this, or those promotional giveaways Stardom sometimes hands out to match winners. I feel like… probably not? But hey who knows!)

The costume column is about Strong Machine J in Dragon Gate and I don’t have any thoughts about the costume but I feel like I could use like, a full guidebook on the Strong Machine lineage because I only really know it as a name evoking “Showa-era masked wrestler” and fully cannot separate legacy iterations from possible duplicates and parodies. I guess I’ve got a lot of reading to do.

Hideki Suzuki in his column talks about “フライング発言” - wrestlers using mic time to call out challengers or storylines without consulting their promotion first, in the context of both Jake Lee floating continuing the feud with Tanahashi, and Hayato challenging Kenoh and Hiromu upon his return. Suzuki makes a distinction between Hayato’s heartfelt, death’s door type of フライング and Jake Lee’s less believable フライング, but seems generally positive on both as a way to get things started and see what happens.
The interviewer brings up a touchstone on the subject I’ll be interested to read about soon! There’s even a footnote explaining it. It sounds like in 2009, as IWGP champion Shinsuke Nakamura called out Antonio Inoki on the microphone, and as it went on there were some attempts for New Japan and Inoki’s Inoki Genome Foundation to get something going, but nothing ever materialized and Nakamura always seemed to be calling out specifically Inoki. Suzuki places it in more the Hayato type of フライング, because Nakamura’s particular career path as a last Inoki disciple and how all that stuff happened must have made it important to him as personal growth to attempt to call out Inoki like that.
Lastly, the interviewer gives Suzuki free reign to make a フライング of his own - is there anyone he would like to challenge? Anyone at all??
Suzuki says the cat he adopted recently is getting up on the couch and playing with toys but still won’t allow petting yet so what he’d really like to do is touch his cat’s butt.

The short industry column is some really interesting context that’s news to me! It’s about Nao Kakuta seeing Saori Anou and Natsupoi both get shupro covers in the last couple weeks, and feeling bittersweet about it because all three of them are first-generation Actwres girls! Kakuta is 35 with an 8 year career and hasn’t ever won a championship, so hearing from some e.g. “now it’s Kakuta’s turn next for a cover!” stings.
Really goes to show how even recent historical context is really easy to miss, because I never would have guessed those three were generation mates somewhere. Maybe it’s just the last month or so talking, but looking back, Actwres girl’Z dissolving seems like one of the most momentous sources of ripple effects from just before I started paying attention. I wonder if I dug back through the pile of back issues I could find interesting news articles I missed…
Anyway definitely a reason for me to root more for Kakuta!

The long industry column is with an AJPW head. Asked roughly (in so many words) to defend the choice of VM Suwama going over Jake Lee on his first defense after Lee already dropped the title once this year due to injury, he mostly just says fans not knowing what to expect is a good thing, and Suwama’s heel champion while involved in the business side too is a new flavor for AJPW. Says the interaction with NJPW is a good opportunity, but about Jake Lee’s フライング just says it would be cool to interact more with NJPW and Tanahashi but they’ll just have to wait for the right time (which sounds to me like “yeah no”). Tiger Mask with the jr. belt and Yuji Nagata in the single-elimination tournament coming up should help draw eyes though. And they’ve apparently got a TV deal with a channel called BS, which is apparently mainly watched by old folks who are the right age to have grown up watching wrestling like Abdullah the Butcher, the Funks, and Mil Mascaras and so on so it’ll be a good opportunity to show them that modern-day AJPW has excitement too. (After hearing American wrestling people drone endlessly about ratings and key demographics since AEW started, it’s really jarring to hear somebody speak positively about how old their ratings audience will be…)

Finally at the very back there’s an ad for the 5 Star GP that shows the blocks, and includes the tournament appearance stats for all the wrestlers.
The stats are pretty interesting! The wrestlers with the most appearances are:

  1. Mayu Iwatani - 9年連続9度目 (I wondered if this was all the 5 Star GPs ever since I still think of Stardom as being 10 years old because of that anniversary feature even though it’s been a year+ since then I think geez but nope! Apparently they started in 2012 so she missed two of them.)
  2. Tam Nakano - 6年連続6度目
  3. Momo Watanabe - 5年連続6度目
  4. Utami Hayashishita - 5年連続5度目
  5. Saki Kashima another name that sounds weird when I switch the order for English - 2年連続5度目 but one of those 5 was the very first one.

Just again - I think it’s interesting how figuring out past contexts like this sometimes feels like archaeology even though it’s just talking about the past ten years, with how quickly things change, especially in Stardom recently. Saki being around early then having a big gap and coming back explains why it’s hard for me to place her sometimes, and in my head Utami is still more or less a young gun but by this metric at least she’s in the veteran percentile. And meanwhile AZM-paisen and SLK are in the background ensuring the career length vs. age graph is just completely all over the place…


… Anyway, I forgot to mention in the last post – how about that scandal finally sticking to Vince McMahon! :eyes: Surely him being (even nominally) farther from the business can be nothing but a demonstrably good thing. Even if it will take a real long time for WWE to not be the thing that it is, if that ever happens…

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feelstana

Aw, poor Nao! I do hope she has better luck one of these days. Maybe she and Hikari have a shot at taking that tag belt from Yuki Arai…

Yes, same, haha. I guess the market over there truly is different… :sweat_smile:

Yes, I forgot to mention this, too! I am very glad to see Vince finally out of the wrestling business. It’s a shame that’s probably the only consequence that he’s going to experience from everything he did… But at least he’s no longer in a position where he can impact so many people’s lives and careers negatively.

It’ll be interesting to see how things go for WWE from here on out. I still probably won’t watch them unless the company changes very substantially including who they’re taking money from and contributing money to, but ideally the situation there will at least get better for the performers.

I was wondering if this would mean the potential for a shift in mindset re: competition and collaboration. I highly doubt they’ll join the so-called Forbidden Door universe that the other companies seem to be creating, but it feels more likely than it did before. I guess Triple H was also involved with the old plans to expand NXT all over the world, so maybe he’ll take that back up again, which would be unfortunate… I do enjoy how Japan has somehow managed to fight off all of WWE’s attempts so far to establish an NXT Japan there.

In any case, it seems like AEW is doing much better in terms of making actual inroads into building a Japanese fanbase than WWE was, considering the unpopularity of the WWE section in shupro, haha, and the many connections that AEW has with Japanese companies now. It feels to me like WWE is just deeply out of touch with what Japanese wrestling fans really want. But all of that can change if people in the right places make the right decisions.

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When 煌めく☆まるごとスターダム was mentioned in the magazine yesterday I checked youtube to see if there were any episodes available (the すぱぱぱぱーん poem sounded fun) and they do have one, with God’s Eye and FWC, but only for the next week as a temporary thing to coincide with the 5 Star GP starting.

I ended up watching the whole thing and it’s pretty fun! The language barrier is surely very steep but I surprised myself by being able to pretty much just understand everything - little tidbits I missed here and there but nothing critical or that wasn’t clarified with further context.

The “try to compliment your teammate as many times as possible within the time limit” game was definitely the highlight (and good fast listening practice since they write the answers down and talk/laugh about them after). Some of the funnier reaching compliments included “赤い” for Syuri, “笑い方が鳥” for Hazuki (which was then demonstrated), and “福島出身” for Sourei (from similarly northern MIRAI).
The games after that were much less interesting but I liked God’s Eye’s poses:


and hey, it’s hosted by a former Wanikani mnemonic!

It’d be cool if the show made it to VOD eventually like NJPW’s variety show.

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I don’t have any translation comments to share quite yet, because I’m still working on the last show, but I did want to share that I found out that the shupro mobile site does indeed have full transcripts of the post-match comments, as well as at least some in-ring stuff!

Here’s an example of where this can be found for TJPW, at least. You need a subscription to actually access them.

Which… I ended up springing for :sweat_smile:. There’s two subscription options, one just for the mobile site that’s like 300 yen a month, and then a premium subscription that’s like 1000 yen a month, which includes the mobile site and gives you access to a digital copy of the magazine. I struggled a bit with the mobile site subscription, because it seemed like they were wanting me to do it through my mobile provider, which, uh, was slightly impossible. So I just caved and bought the premium subscription, which just required a credit card.

So going forward, I’m going to be attempting to translate the full text of the comments, which should be both easier (actual full context!) and harder (more text to translate :sweat_smile:). In hindsight, maybe it’s for the best that it took me this long to figure out that these transcripts were available, because I think trying to do this back in like March or April would have overwhelmed me.

The other thing I wanted to bring up is that there was a really annoying TJPW story misinterpretation making the rounds on joshi twitter last weekend, revolving around a single spot in one match on the show (I’ll talk about it in more detail in the next post, because it’s relevant to the story they were trying to tell with that match).

One fan got desperate enough, he was sharing machine translations of all of the post match comments from that show, trying to demonstrate to other fans how the spot from that match fit into the larger overarching story the performers were trying to tell. (This was how I found out that shupro does in fact have full transcripts available).

In any case, that combined with the Yuki Arai article from the week before kind of pushed me over the edge, and I’m considering 1) making my translations more publicly available, and 2) creating a twitter account just to promote them, in the hopes of at least slightly helping prevent this kind of thing from happening again.

The main thing stopping me is that I’m very much still a beginner, so I don’t want my work to be treated as authoritative, but I am much better than machine translation at least (especially thanks to your help, rodan!), which itself is a step up from what we currently have, which is, uhh, nothing!

I’d been thinking about waiting a year or two (when my Japanese is better) and maybe then making the translations more public, but now it seems like that would be waiting too late…

So, yeah. Does anyone here think that would be a spectacularly bad idea? I doubt the translations will get terribly many readers, even if I promote them, but, uh, that could be famous last words :sweat_smile:. The Dramatic DDT account does a pretty good job covering actual TJPW news, and some character stuff, but I feel like a lot of the actual storytelling that’s happening is slipping completely through the cracks for most people, leading to people attempting to figure out what’s going on just from the matches alone, and occasionally completely missing the mark.

Nice! Maybe I should look into it more… I guess let me know if it seems cool? I haven’t looked into it before out of vaguely assuming it was probably inaccessible, and the site seeming uh, very mobile indeed (which doesn’t really match my very stationary use case…). Are those back issues they advertise like, a weekly selection or a deep archive? I imagine that’s the kind of thing that’s at least a little clearer on the other side of the subscription barrier!

Heck if I know, but I hope it goes well (and am sure it will in a supportive sort of way)! :sweat_smile:
I’ve generally stopped short even of just like “hey twitter mutual who likes Harta manga, and Kindaichi novels, and wrestling, I wonder if any of these forum posts would be interesting to you…?” so it’s uncharted territory to me, but it seems like you’ve seen a need that you have the ability to fill so might as well go for it!

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I haven’t browsed the site in-depth yet, and the site layout is, uh, not the most intuitive, but they seem to have a decent collection of issues? There is the current one, of course, and if you scroll down on the page for it, it has this search bar:

I tried sticking a few random dates in there (though I didn’t test too deep in history. The oldest year on there is 1955!), and quite a few issues seem to be available? I also tried searching for ゴールデン☆ラヴァーズ, and it brought up two pages of results, with the oldest going back to 2010!

So it seems like this is probably the best option if you want to do an incredibly deep dive on one subject, or read a whole bunch of issues in a short period of time.

The ebook reader is a bit of a pain. It doesn’t give you the files or the raw text of the articles (as far as I can tell?), just lets you page through a digital version of the printed magazine. The resolution is decent, but the quality of the printed magazine is much better, and some of the smaller text is slightly blurry in the web version.

I’m a little overwhelmed by the size of the mobile site, so I’m not sure of the full extent of what else it has to offer, though it has quite a few random articles as well as stuff like something titled プロレスラーのヒゲ, which is full of photos of, well, exactly what it says on the tin. This does seem like the place to go, though, if you want text transcriptions of anything from a show/press conference, or more photos of matches.

Copying and pasting is also a little wonky. The site seems to be set up to discourage it, but if you click on the far edge of the page, you can still copy text. Yomichan works on some of it but not other pages.

I haven’t actually tried to use the mobile site on a mobile device, so maybe it looks better there, but it looks a bit strange on my desktop! :sweat_smile:

Yeah, I totally understand that impulse. I’ve linked a few of my close friends to your shupro summaries in this thread, but I don’t link my posts here or my study log posts to anyone I know :sweat_smile:. There’s something that just feels a little awkward about it, for some reason? I guess it’s sort of like having your friends read your homework, which is a little bit weird even if the subject is something they’d be interested in.

I also was very deliberately staying out of wrestling twitter in a public sense. I have a locked account that barely anyone has access to, which is my main way of keeping up with things, but I’ve always been too scared to have an actual public presence on the website. Until now, I guess, though I’m not really planning on using this new account for, well, Posting. I’m going to stick to just sharing translation details, and let other people do what they want with them.

I ended up deciding to just go for it, so I have a twitter account now for promoting the translations! :sweat_smile: :cold_sweat:

ohgeezkota

I also started a thread highlighting specific character moments and quotes from this past year that I thought were particularly good or illuminating story details. It’s quite literally all old news to anyone who’s been reading this thread, haha, but hopefully it’ll help give context for folks who have been watching without the benefit of a random thread in a language learning forum :sweat_smile:.

I was a little floored by how much work I’ve already done this year. I couldn’t even finish summing up all of the story stuff in one afternoon! It’ll probably take several hundred more tweets to get the thread caught up to now.

Something that was interesting to me is that the very first person on twitter to like that thread was actually a Japanese fan (who presumably found the tweet in the #TJPW tag). I guess many Japanese fans are also probably tired of English-speaking fans misunderstanding the stories.

I considered the (very, very high) possibility of the wrestlers themselves finding my account. I tried to add a small disclaimer in Japanese to the bio, clarifying that I’m still a beginner and apologizing for any mistakes :sweat_smile:. I hope I don’t accidentally mislead the wrestlers or teach them wrong English. I’m remembering when Mr. Haku’s translation of Itoh’s post-match comments accidentally taught her the word “cuck.” I know that some of them care quite a lot about making their work accessible to English-speaking fans. Misao in particular has gone out of her way to try to help with this in the past. So I feel like even if my translations are clunky, they’ll probably still be appreciated, and that’s really all that matters.

In any case, it’s a bold new adventure! Even though it’s scary, I think I’ll learn a lot and hopefully help out more folks along the way. :blush:

Thanks for the support!

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It’s funny, it seems like there’s years where I don’t get particularly excited at all about tournaments, and years where I’m over the moon for them and can’t get enough of them, without a lot of in-between.
This year would seem to be the latter…

I’m still watching the G1 just as background noise, but I got invested enough that one day I actually bumped up the number of shows I watched in the day to 2, and genuinely felt like I was more productive because of it (It helped that I had a task that was the right level of engaging but not that engaging, so it felt similar to spending a day doing picross and listening to podcasts, that kind of thing - made the day go by very quick albeit I felt a little bit brain-melted afterwards).

Honestly probably that prompted the jump in enthusiasm is just that my favorite commentator, Miki Motoi, turned out to be doing commentary for a bunch of the NJPW World versions of the show (ones where, in that Japanese TV system I definitely don’t fully understand, the feed was from samurai tv with different commentators but it was overdubbed for njpw world), which gave me more motivation to attempt to at least listen a bit, and therefore pay attention a bit, even if I still wasn’t watching the actual matches very carefully. I like that she roughly transmitted stuff Jay White said to the Japanese audience! I’ve seen her tweet about studying English to better do color commentary for the AEW shows that go up on njpw world, so it feels like a shared victory in a way for us language learners!

Under the circumstances, promos and shenanigans stick out more in my memory than actual matches (but when I look up, it’s generally always good), so what sticks out most for this chunk (I’m definitely still a bit behind) is Jay White (the “ToJay Show” bit is a good bit and I like that he always asks Gedo what’s on his mind and the answer is always nothing. Jay White is one where I feel like I’m often on the cusp, like “maybe I could get into Jay White?” - maybe if/when he’s in the semifinals and I assume I’ll pay more attention to those matches it’ll finally happen), and my continuing surprisingly positive impression of Tom Lawlor (and of course, KENTA and ZSJ). Oh - also after their match Tanahashi and ZSJ were awfully close… a good moment!

The same day I watched two G1 shows… I went out and got a pizza and watch the 5 Star GP opening night!
I’m really loving the 5 Star GP so far!! I was very excited for it, and so far I feel like that anticipation has 100% been met. I have vivid memories of the 2020 5 Star GP, since it was how I got into Stardom, and was my favorite wrestling thing I watched that year, and I looked back to doublecheck and yep – you can really see the growth Stardom’s gone through in the time since then by comparing this year to that one in terms of presentation. The first day that year was no-commentary, in Korakuen, with wrestlers in their regular gear just with a t-shirt. Whereas this year there’s fancy outfits for everybody, commentary, pyro, new ring gear, etc., with, by my count, 12 wrestlers not involved in the company in 2020, and most of the participants who were having had drastic character growth for the better and/or important title reigns in that time.
The wrestlers who I remember impressing me then are still impressing me now, but even moreso (like Iida for example, I remember liking then and I think her whole deal now is drastically improved and lots of fun), there’s more wrestlers I’m newly impressed with, and it seems like all-around a bigger and better version of what I already liked enough to start watching a whole new promotion!

I thought the short time limit at 15 minutes would have an impact one way or another, but it’s barely noticeable! They really pack in a lot in a short time. And time limit draws have not materialized like I thought they would… even when it seemed like a sure thing.
I would worry that it might not be a match intensity sustainable for the whole like, two months (some parts like Iwatani just dang falling on the ground or Giulia’s usual headbutts don’t seem like the kinds of things you should do a lot of) and I mean… it probably isn’t - but I’m glad at least that the schedule is much more spread out than the G1. It seems like mainly weekend shows, so combined with the 15 minute matches and huge blocks, it might be able to come across as extra intense to the audience while not being that much more strenuous than normal for the wrestlers (not that I really know).
My guess for the finals is… Tam vs. Giulia? Not that it’s looking good so far… Really a staggering amount of good options though so the numbers are not in favor of any guess.

Also – I like what they’re doing with non-tournament matches on the cards. Stardom seems particularly good at injecting a bit of fun or interest into a match when they could have gone by the numbers, and having gauntlet matches for the early prelim + getting to see KAIRI in tag matches, is certainly more fun than NJPW’s traditional all 前哨戦 all the time approach.
On the other hand, having to schedule out when I can dig through Stardom’s twitter for backstage promos without seeing spoilers for shows that aren’t on Stardom world yet makes me appreciate even more how easy NJPW makes it to access those…

I think my favorite matches from the first two shows were both Giulia/Hazuki and Giulia/MIRAI, Hayashishita/Syuri, and Kamitani/SLK (Iwatani/MIRAI was really good too but looked painful…). I also watched the recent signing ceremony about New Blood 4 and upcoming title matches and I really like the KAIRI/Kamitani storyline built from these shows! KAIRI as the extremely intimidating and actually pretty mean powerful former champion picking at Kamitani’s self-confidence while criticizing her for it at the same time I think is a really good emotional storyline and totally fits the white belt. I’ll also be curious to see Haruka who was talked up in shupro at New Blood 4 (and also, dang, Syuri really dressed up for that signing)!

Finally for TJPW’s Princess Cup, unfortunately I saw Shoko lost on a rare unthinking visit to the twitter homepage. In the realm of probably unlikely predictions, I could see perhaps Watanabe beating Yamashita and Sakazaki to win the tournament and announce the results of those Up Up Girls auditions as winner / champion? That’s a reeeeaaal hard slope for her and Suzume to climb though! The split of the semifinals ended up interesting… In any case, I hope the matches from here have commentary so it’s easier to set aside full attention.

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Got the translation done a little late because I spent a long time working on that thread (which is still not complete… :sweat_smile:. Tomorrow, hopefully!), but thankfully the show this week was just a VOD show, so there wasn’t really pressure for me to finish the last translation before it.

Something else I wanted to mention first is this tweet from TJPW, which invites fans to share encouragement for Pom (who will be facing Max the Impaler at the next show) by making tweets with the #ぽむがんばれ hashtag. Great opportunity for a little Japanese writing practice here! Or you can post in English if you want, haha.

Since I have a public-facing TJPW twitter account now, I thought it’d be a good opportunity for me to practice output a little, so I drafted up a tweet for this. I haven’t posted it yet because I’m not fully confident on my Japanese :sweat_smile:. Here’s what I came up with:

難敵ですが、ぽむさんはトリッキーな動きと世界で一番最強なスネ蹴りを持っています!

ぽむさんを信じます。幻惑して倒して!海外から応援しています。

東京女子でみんなを応援できるように、日本語を勉強しています!

#ぽむがんばれ

I used a lot of vocab/wording cribbed from the TJPW recaps, which are floating around in my Anki deck. If anyone notices anything that seems off, please let me know :sweat_smile:.

Speaking of the recaps, I didn’t actually translate the one from the July 31 show, since I focused on the transcripts of the comments from shupro instead. And yeah, even though it’s more text to translate, weirdly enough I think the comments are way easier to translate this way, thanks to actually having proper context.

This show was the quarterfinals for the Tokyo Princess Cup, and there were some spicy results!

The first tournament match was Suzume vs Rika Tatsumi. This was my favorite match in the tournament so far, I think! I was so excited when Suzume won, I nearly jumped out of my seat.

In Suzume’s comments, she said that even though she got past Rika in the tournament, she can’t say that she’s surpassed her, so her main goal is still to surpass Rika Tatsumi. She said that she’s pretty battered this time, but her wings are safe, and she’s going to keep flying through the tournament.

They asked her about beating Rika, whom she admires. Then she said: “執着心の勝ちかなというか、正直私は自分で無謀なことを言っている自覚はあったんですよ。でもゼロじゃないと思ってて。その数%を1%でも0.なん%でも積み重ねてそこをもぎ取った勝ちかなと思います。”

I felt like I was understanding the words, but not really understanding her meaning, which made me doubt my understanding of the words :sweat_smile:? Here was my translation:

I guess my tenacity won out, or honestly, I’m aware that you could call it recklessness. But it wasn’t zero. I think you can accumulate those percentages, even 1% or less than 1%, and use them to snatch away a win.

They asked her about the 十字架固め that she used, and I ran into a bit of trouble trying to figure out what that was. One website said it was a “straight arm lock”. Is that what that move is called?? The interviewer asked if the 十字架固め was an expression of her 執念 (tenacity?).

Suzume said: “何個も何個もいろんなパターンというかこうなったらこういうことをしようみたいなのを、考えてたうちのひとつではあるけど、咄嗟にどうにかっていう感じです。” Some tricky grammar in this :sweat_smile:.

Here was my attempt:

Well, I had many, many patterns, or rather, if it came to it, I wanted to try doing something like this, that was something I was thinking about, but it felt like it just happened at the spur of a moment.

The interviewer said there’s just two matches left to go until victory, and Suzume said she’s going to keep flapping her wings.

In Rika’s comment, she said that she’ll graciously accept that a loss is a loss! She doesn’t have any excuses. She said: “My tournament is over, so it’s summer vacation for me. I’m not taking any time off, but I want to go to a festival or something. But normal is boring, so I want to go to some sort of strange festival.”

Nao Kakuta faced Miyu Yamashita, and sadly wasn’t able to take the ace out of the tournament, though she certainly put up a good effort!

Miyu’s comment seemed straightforward enough (though if there’s anything I got glaringly wrong, please point it out :sweat_smile:). Here was my translation of the first part:

This is probably my first time in the final four, but here I am. This is the year that I will definitely win. But in the final four, you have Yuka-chan, me, Miu, and Suzume. Miu and Suzume surprised me, in the quarterfinals today? In terms of match-ups, Nakajima and Rika were likely to win and go on, but Suzume and Miu won instead, and I’m especially cautious of them. But I already know Yuka-chan’s strength, so I want to face Yuka-chan in the finals. I hope we can both show that we’re still strong at the top, and that the two of us can stay in the running and fight in the finals, and I can finally win the tournament.

They asked her how was the match with Nao, and she said:

I thought she’d come with pretty good tactics, and I was sure that she’d be full of tricks, and that she had been scheming. She attacked my leg pretty effectively, benefiting from my own self-destruction, but despite all of that, I was still able to overcome her in the end. But I think Kakuta-san is also someone who has shown us various colors and strengths within TJPW, such as her tag team with Hikari. I met her as an opponent in this tournament, but I was able to beat her somehow.

Concerning her title match with Thunder Rosa in AEW, Miyu said that being able to have that match was an amazing experience for her, and it made her realize that she has to become stronger, and she has been taking that experience into account while she fights in this tournament.

Then she said: “優勝を目指してっていうところではいい流れなのかなと思うのでこのまま勢いに乗って優勝したいなと.” Leaning pretty heavily on DeepL, this is what I had, though I couldn’t really figure out what was going on in the first half of the sentence: “So I think I’m in a good position to aim for the overall victory, so I hope I can keep riding this momentum and win.”

Miyu said that this year in particular, she wants to win.

Nao’s comment was really fun but also chock full of confusing sentences for me. Here’s what she said:

今日の山下さんとのシングルは、もちろん去年の一回戦のリベンジでという思いもあったし、去年の角田じゃないよっていう思いもあったんですけど、私個人の今回のトーナメントの目標としては、誰に勝ちたいとかそういうことじゃなくて、一個でも多くトーナメント勝ち進んでいって東京女子の角田奈穂いるぞっていう、自分の名前存在を大きくするっていうのが自分の黙秘だったから、それが今日で終わってしまったし自分の目標達成することは…できなかったんですけど(涙)。でも山下さんと今日試合して、いい意味で、コイツと試合するのやだなって思ってもらえてたらいいかなって思います。いい意味で嫌な存在でありたいなって思いました。以上です

Here was my attempt:

Today’s singles match with Yamashita-san, of course I thought about it as revenge for the first round last year, and also to show that I’m not the Kakuta of last year, but my personal goal for this tournament wasn’t who I want to beat or that sort of thing, but to win as many rounds as possible, and make my presence bigger as TJPW’s Nao Kakuta. But since I couldn’t make an impression, that’s all over today, and I couldn’t achieve my goal (cries). But this match with Yamashita-san, I hope it made you think, in a good way, ‘no way am I going to fight that bastard’. I want to be an unpleasant person in a good way. That’s all.

The next match was Hikari Noa vs Yuka Sakazaki. This match was indirectly responsible for me starting my new twitter account, thanks to one spot in the match where Yuka no-sold some of Hikari’s kicks, which went viral in a bad way on twitter. Lots of people with zero Japanese ability and no knowledge of what TJPW is like behind the scenes saw this spot and theorized that there was backstage heat between Yuka and Hikari, or that the office hated Hikari and was burying her :roll_eyes:.

The wrestlers comments make it pretty clear that there was an intentional story they were trying to tell with that spot, though perhaps it’s an idea that seemed better on paper than it turned out in reality (the camera angle didn’t really help).

Basically, I realized that the fandom as a whole was lacking a great deal of very important context and was jumping to totally incorrect conclusions because of it, and it felt selfish to keep that information to myself if it could stop even a little bit of false information spreading. But who knows, maybe I’ll post these comments and not many people will read them anyway. But at least I’ll have tried :sweat_smile:.

In any case, here is Yuka’s comment. She starts off by saying she got past the quarterfinals, and then she says: “やっぱりすごい今回の大会波瀾万丈なことが起きて自分の中でも結構プレッシャーだったりとか感じることもあったんですけど、やっぱりここは負けられないと思ってめっちゃ痩せ我慢して、大丈夫なふりしてましたが.”

I feel moderately confident I understood this, but want to double-check. Here was my translation: “There were a lot of shake-ups during this show, and I in particular felt a lot of pressure, but I knew that I couldn’t lose here, so I put on a show of endurance and pretended I was okay.”

Yuka said that she felt that Hikari’s strength is increasing, but she still wants to go much, much higher. For the sake of TJPW advancing, she knew she couldn’t lose here, so she planted her feet firmly and faced down Hikari, and she’s glad that she was able to win. “At least for now.”

Yuka went on to say (in response to a question about her now being two matches away from her first tournament win) that she wasn’t able to participate last year, but since this summer tournament started, every year everyone has been getting stronger and stronger. Winning through to the next round has gotten more and more difficult, so she feels like the value of the tournament itself is increasing.

Then she said, “今。なので、夏はちょっとあんまり私に味方してくれないので、ここで強くなってる東京女子、レベル上がってる東京女子で、この夏主役になれたら.” I got tripped up by this sentence.

Here was my attempt: “Now, since summer is not really on my side, I want to play a leading role this summer at TJPW, where we’re getting stronger and the level is getting higher.”

Yuka said it’ll once again open a door for her, so she wants to get a solid win here, and then next year, she thinks they’ll be able to have an even better tournament, so she wants to keep moving up and up.

Hikari said that during her first time participating in the Princess Cup, Yuka was her first opponent, and she has always admired her, from before her debut up until their match today.

I wasn’t confident about various pieces of this whole chunk, though I think I got the general idea:

たくさんユカさんに教えてもらったことがあって、今の自分がいるからこそ超えるっていう意味で恩返しがしたかったんですけど、やっぱりユカさんはもっともっと強くなってて。タッグのタイトルマッチでもたくさん怒らせちゃったりして、でも自分の中で憧れに嫌われる勇気っていうのがあと一歩踏み出せなかったのが大きいかなって思います

Here was my attempt:

Yuka-san has taught me so much, and I wanted to surpass her because of who I am now, and repay her in that sense, but she has become even stronger. I made her really angry in the tag title match, but I couldn’t quite muster up the courage within myself to be hated by someone I admired.

Hikari finished by saying that she’s going to keep following in Yuka’s footsteps, and one day she will walk next to her, and then past her. She said, “ユカさんが私のこと大好きになってもらえるように頑張りたいと思います” which I believe means: “I want to do my best so that Yuka-san will love me.”

The main event was Shoko Nakajima vs Miu Watanabe, which was awesome. Probably my second favorite match of the tournament so far. I came into it sort of rooting for both of them, but I was fully on Miu’s side by the end, and was thrilled to see her win!

Shupro provided a transcript of what she said in ring, which was helpful, though the first sentence really threw me off. I think she’s sort of trying to find her words, hence some of the repetition? She said: “中島さんに、勝つことができましたー! いつかは先輩たちの高い高い、高すぎる壁をいつかは私たちが、私が越さなきゃいけないなと思ってて.”

Here was my attempt: "Nakajima-san, I was able to win! Sooner or later, I thought that we’d—that I’d have to pass over that high, high—too high wall that is our senpais.

She continued, and the rest was more straightforward, I think:

But it was so hard. Today, amazingly, somehow… I got beat up, but somehow was just barely able to win! Now that I’ve won, the path to victory has really come into view. I made it into the final four… and since I made it into the final four, the semifinals at Korakuen Hall are next. I still have a long and difficult road ahead, but I’m going to do my best not to lose, to keep winning. So please support me, and thank you so much for today!

Something that was interesting to me is that they transcribed part of her comment like this: “ベスト4(よん)になれたので…ベスト4(フォー)になれたので、次は後楽園ホールで準決勝になります.” I didn’t have time to go back and rewatch the end of the show, but I’m assuming it’s saying that she pronounced the first 4 as よん and the second one as, well, “four”! I just thought that was neat, haha.

In her comments, Miu said, “自分のなかで、この夏は先輩たちを超えなきゃなとか、そういうぼんやりした目標とかじゃなくて、越えなければいけないってものすごく強く思ってたので.”

I translated this as: “This summer, surpassing my senpais wasn’t just a vague goal, it was something I felt very strongly that I absolutely had to do.”

She said she was in pretty rough shape, but was somehow able to scrape a win. As a result, she was able to advance in the tournament. It’s still a tough road ahead, but from here…

Then she said: “去年まではベスト4までいっても優勝がものすごく見えるっていうのはなくて。去年はぼんやり、すっごい遠くにあるなって感じてたんですけど、今年はチャンピオンの中島さんに勝ったことで上も見えてきたし.”

I was confused by this at first and thought she was speaking more generally (“even if you made it into the final four”), but then I realized that she was probably talking about her own chances specifically? Here was how I translated it:

Just last year, even if I made it into the final four, I didn’t have a great shot at winning the tournament. Last year, it felt so distant and far away, but this year, with my win over the champion Nakajima-san, I can see the top.

She said that it means a lot to her precisely because she was able to beat Shoko, whom she respects so much. She’s going to do her best to keep winning from here.

They asked her how she won, and she said: “今日はホントに負けたくない、勝てなくても負けたくないっていつも歌ってるんですけど、勝てなくてもじゃなく、勝ちたいから負けたくないっていう思いがただただ強くて。それとプラスして普段やってきてることを、自分が自分をどうやって信じてあげられるか.”

This was a mixture of tricky grammar and also just things that were difficult to translate :sweat_smile:. I worked on just the first sentence for probably 20 minutes. I think this is what she said:

Today I really didn’t want to lose. Even if I don’t win, I always sing ‘I don’t want to lose’, but it’s not that even if I lose, I want to win, it’s that my ‘I don’t want to lose’ desire is incredibly strong. That, plus how was I able to believe in myself and the things that I usually do?

Miu said that she doesn’t really believe in herself, but today she persevered because she decided to believe in herself.

They asked her about the semifinals, and she answered “やばいですね…” and laughed. I spent a lot of time on google trying to figure out how on earth to translate it… :sweat_smile:. I ended up going with “It’s… terrific (laughs)”. Though maybe there’s a better choice? It’s a weird tricky word!

Right after that, Miu said: “でも、なかなかの強敵だし、鈴芽もリカさんに勝ったということで、ちょっと驚きすぎてるんですけど。ものすごく強いんだなって…” I struggled to wrap my brain around this one, but ended up going with: “She’s a really strong opponent, but Suzume beating Rika-san, it’s a bit of a surprise. She’s gotten incredibly strong…”

Then she said: “誰と当たるから分かんないから、鈴芽とは一緒に後輩が頑張っていこうっていう気持ちでいきたいし.” I think this meant: “I don’t know who I’ll be facing, so with the feeling that us juniors should do our best together, I want to advance with Suzume.”

She said: “先輩たちはホントに強すぎて、東京女子の看板である先輩たちなので.” I wasn’t quite sure on singular/plural, but then I realized she was almost certainly talking specifically about Miyu: “Our senpais are really strong, and this senpai in particular is the figurehead of TJPW.” (There’s that tricky word, 看板, again :sweat_smile:. Maybe one day I’ll find a translation for it in this context that I’m happy with. I keep changing my mind…)

She said that she wants to overcome that wall as well.

Shoko said: “未詩とはけっこう道場で一緒に過ごすことがホントに多くて、今回のトーナメント、私たちの世代が勝ち上がるとやっぱりファンのみなさんの後輩たちに対する期待みたいなのを痛いほど感じて.” I think I understood this? Here was my attempt:

I’ve spent quite a lot of time with Miu at the dojo. During this tournament, when my generation wins, I feel all of the fans’ hope for the younger generation to a painful extent.

Shoko says that day by day, when she’s with Miu, she’s watched her get better and better from close up. She felt strongly that she didn’t want Miu to surpass her, so she really didn’t want to lose today, and did her absolute best with everything she had.

Then she said: “ここで決められないっていうのは、まだまだ鍛え方が足りないことなのかなと痛感しました.” I translated this as: “But the fact that I couldn’t win here means that my training wasn’t enough, and I feel that keenly.”

The interviewer asked when they trained together, did Shoko feel threatened by her growth?

Shoko said that she did. She said there were a lot of surprises, and while she’s happy about that, there’s also a part of her that feels frightened to see it. Because she was watching Miu so closely, she was the opponent she really didn’t want to lose to the most.

And there we go! The semifinals are set!

I think that’s actually the most likely prediction, honestly! I don’t know about the Up Up Girls announcement, but I think this is absolutely set up to be Miu’s year. Especially if she truly beats Shoko, Miyu, and then Yuka back-to-back to win.

I really like the poster for the semifinals:

Something I realized while typing up that twitter thread and revisiting TJPW’s stories from the past year (and while I was thinking about why so many people were so wrong about Yuka and Hikari’s entire dynamic) is that TJPW has absolutely had a huge overarching story this year concerning the younger generation vs the established top three people (or four if you include Rika).

TJPW doesn’t really have traditional heels, outside of the notable exception of Sakisama, so I think some fans might not realize I guess the subtlety of the story here? We’re meant to root for wrestlers like Miu and Suzume and Hikari and Arai and such to succeed against the top three. It’s supposed to feel like an impossible hill for them to climb so that when they finally do it, we’re overjoyed. (Though, I’m absolutely guilty of sometimes just rooting for my favorites to crush the younger talent haha).

Before Shoko even got the belt, she talked about feeling like this was maybe her last chance, because the new generation is getting stronger, and she’s worried she might not be able to essentially keep her position. Shoko and Yuka are scared of Miu and Hikari.

Everyone at the top of the card in TJPW, except for maybe Miyu (who I don’t think fears anything, haha), is terrified of the younger generation getting up to their level, and losing the position they’ve enjoyed for most of TJPW’s history. There’s a tension there, though, because at the same time, they want the younger talent to succeed, because they know it’s better for the health of the company, but they’re afraid of personally losing their own position.

I feel like the TPC sort of embodies that struggle, if it goes how I think it’s going to go. Already, we’ve had several matches pitting a younger wrestler against the senpai they admire the most (Suzume vs Rika, Hikari vs Yuka).

Miu vs Miyu is a personal favorite of mine, because I’ve always felt like Miu is sort of set up to maybe become the next generation’s ace, though I don’t know how much of that is intentional story being told, and how much of it is wishful thinking :sweat_smile:. But in any case, I think Miu beating Miyu for the first time would be really, really cool, and I’m really rooting for her to finally accomplish it!

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週刊プロレス No.2195

In Tanahashi’s column, they talk about the G1, and point out a mildly interesting fact I also noticed when I made my 星取表, there’s 14 外国人 in the tournament, and 7 Japanese wrestlers who don’t use kanji in their names, meaning the fraction of kanji-named wrestlers is 1/4 the total pool (I’d point out the BOSJ was even lower at 1/5). Tanahashi jokes they shoulda arranged the blocks like that so there’d be a kanji block, a non-kanji block, etc. They talk about Tana’s impressions of the NJPW Strong wrestlers, and he describes similar things to the Tom Lawlor impressions I’ve described of my own.

In Kenoh’s column, he’s congratulated on his GHC heavweight tile victory! But questioned on why he held the belt upside down when showing it off after winning it!
pain_kenoh
He says it definitely wasn’t a mistake from being too excited, but rather he knew that mistakes make things more memorable, so he intentionally held it upside down so the クソヤローども would remember and talk about it. They played right into his hands!!
The N-1 Victory was announced and he talks about entering the tournament as a champion, and how he’ll have Inamura and Okada (the NOAH Okada) have a series of matches during it with the winner earning a shot at his title, to offset how the N-1 has only one Japanese wrestler in his 20s.

Some good pictures from Syruri’s match with Tam Nakano!


It sounds like from the recap of the Stardom coffin match that Yuu is probably still not directly affiliated with Stardom / still in Sendai Girls, and that she teased a possibility of showing up in Stardom together with Hashimoto as チーム200キロ.

I like that the magazine folks highlighted the same “arrivederci, mata na!” moment from Suzu’s backstage promo that I mentioned when I gave my thoughts about that show!

There’s a pull-out poster of all the previous 5 Star GP winners. A helluva group of wrestlers! The only name I didn’t recognize is Yoko Bito - it looks like she retired in 2017. Sometime I should try going back and watching Stardom from years gone by… how much things have changed may make that jarring though.
I like that the crown gets a little fancier over the years.

In Giulia’s column, it’s a continuation from last time but Mai left and now it’s just Giulia and Suzuki, so as you would expect from them the whole thing is basically a manzai routine with Suzuki being relentlessly snide and Giulia reacting to it.
Suzuki’s rooting for his new student Mai and has confidence in her but when asked Giulia says the 10勝2敗 plan is 無理でしょう!
Suzuki points out that Giulia’s block is full of people she has intense feuds with (”全員●ねって感じですか?” he asks, with I think “死ね” being what’s censored?) and then stirs the pot by joking that Mai Sakurai told him she was planning to betray Giulia as well.
In predictions, Suzuki says he wishes he’d like to say 松戸 will win but he’ll pick Mai or SLK. I was wondering who the heck 松戸 is - but then noticed Wikipedia lists Giulia’s real name as 松戸グロリア英美, and sure enough, after he does it a couple more times Giulia tells him to quit using her 本名! A funny moment considering it’s a written transcript in Giulia’s own magazine column where her bio says “本名非公開” in the corner.
Suzuki calls his own style (I think) “老外プロレス” and suggests if they win they should have a celebratory dinner, on Giulia’s dime of course, and reminds her that if Mai Sakurai doesn’t win ten times they gotta do that group dogeza.

In an interview with Syuri, she talks about the 5 Star GP and how she wants to have matches that linger in people’s memory, recounting the finals last year with Takumi Iroha. She talks about Hayashishita and how she’s leveled up since they last fought by becoming Queen’s Quest’s leader so she doesn’t know just what will happen, and says about Saki Kashima being openly terrified of being in the same block as Syuri that Kashima’s “逆にこええな、と(笑)” and she’s definitely someone to be careful around. She talks about Natsupoi leaving DDM and is generally kind about supporting both, as choosing an individual path without regrets is good and DDM is still strong with Maika and Himeka etc. Other than God’s Eye, she mentions Giulia as someone she would like to meet in the finals, as it sounds like she said she wanted an アリカバ confrontation in the finals last year, but it didn’t happen since Giulia was injured.
It’s odd to see Syuri in green! More like 翠里 amirite!

Suzu has a short interview and mentions SLK, Kamitani, and of course, Giulia as opponents she’s especially looking forward to in the 5 Star GP.
SAKI also has a short interview and mentions title-havers, particularly Syuri, as people she especially wants to target, as well as “ウナちゃん” and Tam. Apparently she and Tam were both in Actwres girls but never had a singles match since it didn’t line up at the same time. She says her biggest impression of Stardom is that “見ている人の分母が違うな”. Everything just brings more attention. She says she works at EBRIETAS, a sports bar run by Toru Yano (?!) and up til now customers paid her no mind but now she gets a lot of “頑張ってください” and “見に行きますよ” and so on.

The history column is pretty interesting! It’s about Terry Funk’s first match in Japan ever, when he was 26 in 1970. I cannot imagine Terry Funk ever being 28… It was apparently with Dory against the All Asia Tag champions (a championship still going today - saw it at that AJPW show a little while ago), Inoki and Yoshimura. The columnist, in his first year of middle school, thought at the time along the liens of “even for a non-title match, that’s a tough job for Terry!” It sounds like the first round (boy 1970 sure is a long time ago) was a loss for the funks, and it looked like a straight loss, but they won the remaining two falls for a comeback.
Apparently something that sticks out in the author’s mind is Terry got jeered at by the Japanese crowd, “マジメにやれ!” because of his オーバーアクション. And the author is glad that it was in Japanese because if it were in English Funk might have paid attention to it and not stood out as much in the future, as that ended up being part of his charm.

In Mutoh’s column he talks more about championship belts, recounting some various aspects of his career involving them. One tidbit I can pull out is he scorns the NJPW decision to drop their championship’s history when they merged the IWGP belts recently.

For the archive photo of the week, a sweet picture of Syuri thanking the ref at World Climax where you can tell the ref is smiling under his mask.


lotta Syuri pictures today huh

The short industry column is about how apparently Suwama invited Kento Miyahara to join Voodoo Murders, and how apparently Miyahara was briefly in the original incarnation of VM. He’s got a general “悪ガキ” vibe but it sounds like that was the only time he was an outright heel. He declined to accept or deny Suwama’s invitation.


One thing I’ll mention in closing is I noticed with this most recent time I’ve been caught up – it’s the first time I’ve been looking forward to reading the actual magazines! I very often look forward to the walk to pick them up, and excuse to be outside, eat pork buns, and impulse buy Japanese books it provides, and I liked the magazines fine but I didn’t look forward to that part. I feel like it’s only with this last round of catch-up that I’m aware enough of the industry in general, a fast enough reader, and enthusiastic enough about wrestling to be an actual target audience for the magazine even aside from language learning aspects.

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Production definitely isn’t my strong suit so take this with an extremely heavy grain of salt, but this part feels like it should be ぽむさんを信じています. 信じます feels to me like you believe her, generally, where 信じています feels like you actively trust her.
幻惑 might be a little unusual word choice unless it’s a phrase associated with her already (but I don’t really know).
I’m sure any 海外から応援 would be received with plenty of understanding though! And I got what you were saying, at least!

I think it’s more like – the structure is that first she offers a quick confident summary for her victory: 執着心の勝ちかな
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Then she considers further and says that to tell the truth she’s sometimes felt self-conscious of saying 無謀なこと
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And so she says it was more like the kind of victory where – while her chances weren’t zero – she scraped by out of very low percentage chances.
I think you got tripped up in the “I’m aware that you could call it recklessness” part (it’s 私 言っている’ing that she’s aware of) and I think the last 勝ちかな is an alternative description of the 勝ち that just happened, linking with the 勝ちかな at the start.

This appears to be referring to the pinning move she does at the end of the match.
It seems like it would be a “crucifix pin” since it’s mentioned here and this move looks similar to what Suzume did. Also… it’s a direct translation of the name.
(I honestly don’t really pay attention to different kinds of pins the way I might pay attention to different power moves or submissions…)

I would say the element your translation lacks is the competition element in what she’s saying. The situation is that she used an unusual pin to eke out a victory over a difficult opponent, so the thought process she’s describing is about having lots of options and having in the moment to pick the right one that will lead to victory.
She had lots of patterns in mind / lots of “if this happens, I’ll do this” thought processes, and there’s one that’s the choice to make, but she just had to somehow make it in the moment - is what it felt like in the match (when/before she hit that pin).

… I should go to bed! I will read the rest in the morning!

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Thanks!

I got 幻惑 from this sentence in a recent show recap: “開始早々、ぽむは場外で虫取り網を鈴芽の頭に被せて捕獲し、トリッキーな動きで幻惑.” I was looking for a word to describe Pom, well, doing Pom-ish things during a match, and it seemed like a possible candidate :sweat_smile:. Hilariously, it’s one I actually struggled to figure out how to translate into English, though I like “bamboozle,” which one website suggested.

Thank you for the rest of your help as well!

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For the first part I would say it’s a bit more like the stuff she was talking about in AEW and the experience accumulated there is いい流れ for her position now of aiming for the tournament victory, with いい流れ seeming to be like good fortune coming her way.
The grammar thing to point out might be the では - from that I’d she’s talking from the perspective of being at 優勝を目指してっていうところ as context. As in, “優勝を目指してっていうところで” is the topic of the next bit and いい流れなのかな is the predicate. So rather than talking about that ところ directly, she’s still talking about what she was talking about, but with it as important context.

Out of curiosity, are you listening to the audio while looking over the transcript? The 黙秘 sounds to me like a definite transcript mistake, as she says 目標 which makes lots more sense in context and it makes sense how the typo would happen! Looks like either you weren’t tripped up by it or that might have ended up as “since I couldn’t make an impression”? If the latter I can sense some confusion!

I think your translation is fine though!
A few minor nitpicks but they’re more like interpretation than correction:
I think “that’s all over today, and I couldn’t achieve my goal” is maybe more like “but today, it’s over, so I wasn’t able to achieve my goal.” Like yours sounds a little more like losing today meant her entire goal was a failure, but her goal was 一個でも多く tournament wins and she did manage that, so I’d speculate it’s more like just the goal for today that was a part of that that was a failure.
In the ‘no way am I going to fight that bastard’ part, bastard is probably a bit strong! I also assume that it’s Yamashita she wanted to transmit that feeling to, and potential opponents rather than like, the audience. Also, 嫌な存在 sounds to me like an obstacle or a blemish you wish you didn’t have to deal with, whereas “unpleasant person” just sounds like a jerk. Maybe “unpleasant opponent” or some better phrase? I believe she’s saying she wants to be an opponent other wrestlers don’t look forward to fighting.

Huh, yeah, an interesting spot I totally didn’t notice when I watched the show! (I was probably doing anki or something)
I suppose also if you were having some in-ring airing of backstage grievances and your opponent no sold your kick, you probably wouldn’t hit it in the same way a bunch more times and then sell your opponent’s returning blow really strongly to cap off the exchange…

Seems generally fine! I would say 自分の中でも isn’t “I in particular” but like, she felt the pressure even within herself.
I’d also speculate “pretended I was okay” is probably one of those phrases that sounds more intense in English despite being a direct translation. I don’t know that I have a better phrase to use, but I think she’s just saying she felt a lot of internal pressure but new she had to win so she bore through it and put on an unfazed face. I guess what I’m getting at is 大丈夫 here in context sounds to me more like “大丈夫, I got this” whereas “okay” here sounds like “mentally sound and managing in life on a basic level” :sweat_smile: so the lack of one might be more worrying than the other…

In the audio (and with the period) the “今” is definitely tacking on to the previous thought like “Blah Blah, 今。” - not connected to this thought.

Otherwise fine! The level rising in TJPW like she was talking about before this, and summer not generally being on her side, are both reasons informing why she wants to be the summer star in this leveling up Tokyo Joshi, is what I’d say she’s saying.

I think I’m all right with that!
You could probably add something at the end like “and I think that had a big impact in the match” for のが大きいかなって思います. I think she’s saying she made Yuka mad in the tag title match too, and she crumbled when it happened in this match since she wasn’t brave enough to weather Yuka’s rage since she admires her too much.

Yeah I mean… the thing about in-ring promos is the wrestlers are inevitably extremely exhausted when they give them! So you can imagine (or hear along with the transcript) deep breaths after pretty much every particle!
That said, I would say that in this case these are less her looking for words and more rhetorical flourishes and emphesis. That’s the other thing about in-ring promos, they’re delivered to a crowd.
So why say “高い壁” when you can say “高い高い、高すぎる壁” to really really drive home the 高いness to the audience?
The 私たちが、私が, is her connecting her personal victory in the match to the general group victory she’s been talking about a lot and hoping for and taking on herself, of her generation overcoming their senpais. Like saying “I’ve been thinking for a long time that we - that I - need to do this.” She’s rhetorically taking on the responsibility that she’s been saying she’s internalized.
So I don’t think you got the meaning wrong or anything, but in the audio it doesn’t sound like working for words, just the different rhythm of a an in-ring promo!

Yep! The crowd chuckles a little at ベスト4(よん), and then she corrects herself eliciting more chuckles. So just a funny slip of the tongue!

Yep! No notes

Yeah, minor quibble is that 去年までは is up through last year, and that’s where the も part comes in. Like in all previous tournaments, even if/when she made it to the final four, winning the whole thing didn’t feel extremely within sight like it does now, thanks to her beating the champion, Nakajima.

Dunno what you’re talking about, I don’t see anything to get tripped up in!
Let’s see here…
sera_ponders

I would put it something like this:

Today I truly don’t want to lose. I’m always singing “it doesn’t matter if I win, but I don’t want to lose!”, but instead of “it doesn’t matter if I win”, the feeling that “because I want to win, I don’t want to lose” is very strong. And plus, the feeling of how can I believe in myself and my normal repertoire (is also very strong).

“勝てなくても負けたくない” together is an individual lyric in the song 負けたくない, and that whole part is together. She then negates the first half to replace it with a different clause. I think you got tripped up by treating them as individual bits and not a combination.
Also, just to point out, it looks like you ended up with " it’s not that even if I lose, I want to win", for “勝てなくてもじゃなく、勝ちたい”, but I’d point out that even if that were the right structure, it would be “it’s not that even if I don’t win, I want to win” :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: There’s no “even if I lose” in the mix!
I’d also mention I’m a bit unsure of how to best render the tense here – I suppose she’s talking mainly about the specific match and why she won but also her general mindset at this point in the tournament (and why that helped her win). It might flow best in English to switch it all to past tense? I dunno.

No, it would be more like… "uh oh " / “oh crud” / “I’m in danger!”
It’s not the face of someone about to say it’s terrific :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
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You’re right that it’s a tricky word to translate, so I don’t have a great phrase to slot in, but she’s expressing that the remaining 4 and the likely prospect of having to face both Yamashita and Sakazaki if she wants to win (which we’ve well established she does want to do) is a painful, risky, odds-against-her prospect, ain’t it?
The brief laugh is a laugh like the one someone would make after saying “looks tough huh!” before rushing into certain doom.

I would say the なかなかの強敵だし part isn’t talking about Suzume, it’s a transition to talking about Suzume. Why is the ベスト4 yabai? because there’s tough opponents for one, and plus Suzume too showed incredible strength with her surprising victory over Rika. So I would say the なかなかの強敵 are rather Yamashita and Sakazaki.

I don’t know that she’s saying she specifically wants to advance with Suzume (to the finals, I’m assuming you mean?), I think she’s just saying generally since they don’t know what the match-ups will be yet she wants to go into it together with shared 後輩 頑張る spirit.

I think you overthought it a bit – たち is a dead give away it’s plural!
And surely it’s fair to say both Sakazaki and Yamashita are both really strong and both marquee attractions for TJPW.

Yep! I don’t have any notes.


Whew, I’m really glad you’re finding the transcripts helpful, but it’s funny how answering your questions got harder now that I can’t just rely on having a bunch more context and have to parse more grammar. :sweat_smile:
If you have time, I’d definitely recommend trying to read some of them along with the video! I bet having audio and transcripts for a ton of material you’re that passionate about will prove a fantastic listening resource in the future!

By the way – one backstage promo I remember being curious what the full transcript would say about was that Yamashita/Itoh one a while back where they bickered a lot. There was a lot I couldn’t pick out and it kinda bugged me. Do you have access to the full thing now by any chance?
Come to think of it also, I suppose you might have a proper transcript of Misao’s Grand Princess now perhaps! Assuming they go back that far, and that they transcribed that although it was mid-show. If it’s available I’d be curious how well I did transcribing it…

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