Finished the first half of TJPW’s January 15 show (the first round of the tag tournament)!
The comments for this show ended up being, uh, longer than the Korakuen show translation was 
. So I decided to split the posts into two haha so that it was a little less overwhelming… 
I didn’t actually have a lot of trouble with most of these!
The first tournament match was Juria and Moka vs Toyo Mates, which ended with Juria and Moka getting the upset victory! I felt bad for Mahiro, honestly… This wasn’t the round one upset I was hoping we’d get…
After the match, Juria and Moka said:
Miyamoto: “Today I participated in the tag tournament with Juria-san for the first time together, and we were able to get past the first match. I’m so happy! This time we faced Toyo Mates, and next is Daisy Monkey. I want to beat Daisy Monkey and win the tournament with Juria-san.”
Juria: “This was my first time participating in a tournament. I was able to team up with Moka-san in our karate tag team, and I had the feeling that we were absolutely going to win no matter what it took, but… I’m so happy that we actually won! But I’m not going to just bask in the happiness of winning the first round; we’re gonna win through the next one, too. I want to seize the victory with Moka-san, so I want to work hard together.”
Miyamoto: “Let’s do our best!”
(How are you going to fight in the next match?)
“Daisy Monkey has been teaming together for a while, and their teamwork is fantastic. But we’ve been working together a lot since last year, and I think our teamwork is just getting better and better. I hope we can win by combining our strength!”
Juria: “I lost to Daisy Monkey in my debut. I was really emotional about my debut match… I have a lot of feelings attached to it, even though I lost. This time, I’ll be with Moka-san as a team. Even in my private life, Moka-san always talks to me and gives me advice, so she’s a senpai whom I love very much. I want us to crush Daisy Monkey together.”
Kamiyu and Mahiro’s comments were pretty entertaining, haha. My main question here, I guess, was more about translating tone and informal speech. Just how hard should the English translation go to match the Japanese?
Kamifuku: “What the hell are you doing?”
Kiryu: “I’m so sorry…”
Kamifuku: “Hey! The tournament just started, what the hell is this? You lost to a woman with a hairstyle that looks like the Mother of Ultra, huh? WHY!” (brief pause) “…I went too far, didn’t I? Hey, I’m just kidding.”
Kiryu: “No, but I’m really…”
Kamifuku: “Sometimes you just lose. I lose sometimes, too. Do you want to go get something to eat?”
Kiryu: “C-crab…”
Kamifuku: “Crab?”
Kiryu: “Crab omelet…”
Kamifuku: “Well, it’s cheap. Let’s go.”
The next tournament match was Reiwa AA Cannon vs Raku and Yuki Aino. I… admittedly spent most of this match thinking, "I know we just had a big round one upset, but we can get a second one in a row, right? Right?? We did not get a second one in a row 
"
After the match, Arai and Akai said:
Akai: “When this tournament was announced and we were chosen to enter, our feelings were completely different compared to how we feel today after our first match. We’ve lost our tag belts, and they’ve gone overseas. We have to once again start from scratch, climb up from absolutely nothing, and get our belts back with our own hands. Our opponents today, Raku and Yuki Aino, were a team we were supposed to defend our belts against in a title match. In that sense, I expected them to be formidable foes.”
Then she said, “ここでひとつもこぼすことはできないので、今日優希ちゃんとの連帯感というか気持ちはより太くなったように感じます”, and I wasn’t entirely sure about that first part, haha.
“I couldn’t make even a single misstep here, so I felt a certain solidarity with Yuki-chan today, or perhaps I should say, that feeling has become stronger.”
Arai: “I was really depressed because I lost us our tag belts at the beginning of the year… But being able to team up again with her right away like this and participate in the tournament, I think I was able to force my feelings to change. I want to keep working hard together so that we can keep climbing up and up.”
Akai: “More so than the last time we faced Raku and Yuki, they brought out some things that we don’t have in our toolkit. In that sense, they were very frightening. After all, you climb up the rounds of a tournament like this, at each stage, more and more powerful enemies will emerge, and you will get hit. We will put our pride and spirit on the line and make it all the way back to the top.”
In the next part, they said:
(Daydream are your next opponents)
“My mental image of Daydream had them holding the tag belts. We also had the tag belts until very recently, so we can’t lose to them here either. I am well-acquainted with Tatsumi, since the olden days. Yuki-chan also knows how scary Rika and Miu are.”
Arai: “I also teamed up with Moka-san in the tournament last year, but we couldn’t advance because we lost to Daydream. This year, I want to take revenge with Akai-san.”
Akai: “We are moving up the staircase step by step, so in that sense, I want to take a big step up by beating Daydream next.”
Then the interviewer asked about Raku and Yuki using the pillow to block their move, and Saki said, “あのダブル新人賞、私たちオリジナルの、私たちだからできる技なのでけっこう大事にしてたので、あんなかわされ方があると思わなかったので…” I wasn’t quite sure about this sentence .
(They blocked the Double Rookie of the Year Award with a pillow)
“The Double Rookie of the Year Award is our original move, and it’s a move that only we can do, which means we treasure it greatly. So I didn’t think it could be evaded like that… I want the referee to be a little more strict with his checks.”
Arai: “I’m mad!”
Akai: “I’m going to take out my anger on Daydream in the next match.”
In Yuki and Raku’s comments, I was a bit unsure about Raku’s last two sentences here: “今日はユキさんと一緒に闘えなかったタイトルマッチの気持ちも込めて試合に臨んだんですけど。ユキさんが最後頑張ってくれて、タッチしてくれた時にユキさんの気持ちも背負って。最後、私が絶対にいってやろうって思ったけど…うまくいかないところもあって.”
The “ユキさんが最後頑張ってくれて” part I interpreted differently when I first read the transcript, then I watched the video, and she seemed to be saying that Yuki was telling her “頑張って!” at the end? But I dunno .
Raku: “I went into the match today with the spirit of the title match that I hadn’t been able to do with Yuki-san hanging over it. At the end, Yuki-san encouraged me, and when she tagged me in, I also carried her feelings with me. In the end, I was determined to give it my all, but… it didn’t go well. Today, Pom was seconding us, and it felt like we were fighting 3 on 2. But I’m still here at (the bottom of) the mountain in 2023. We couldn’t climb up together in the tournament, but let’s go up that mountain.”
In the next part, the first chunk went pretty smoothly:
Aino: “Let’s do it! You’re so cute. This isn’t a redo, but when I challenged with Pom in November… that was that title challenge. I got one more chance, one more opportunity to face Reiwa AA Cannon, Akai-san and Arai-chan, together with Raku. Even though it was the first round of the tournament, I went into it as if it were a title match.”
Then she said, “なかなかね、枕使ったりとか何が何でも、どう思われたって勝ちたいと思って一生懸命やりはしたんですけど、やっぱりまだ高い山だったので.” I got tripped up a couple times in this sentence, then maybe figured it out?
“I tried my best to win by any means, using whatever I could think of, like that pillow, but in the end the mountain was still too high. She said that we’re still at the bottom of the mountain, so that means if we choose to climb it, we’ll be able to do it someday. We’re going to do our best, and 2023 has only just begun. I want to do it! But I wanted to face more tag teams. It’s disappointing.”
Raku: “I wanted to fight, too… Well, let’s get into the cable car.”
Aino: “We’ll ride it!”
Raku: “Actually, let’s climb up on our own two legs.”
Aino: “Yes! We’ll go at our own pace.”
And that’s it for this first half! The rest is literally just Miyu and Itoh’s comments (with a little bit from Free WiFi at the end); they sure talked a lot . I’m gonna try to hopefully get those done by the end of tomorrow!