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

[rodan]

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…

… 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
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…

[rodan]

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

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! 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…

[fallynleaf]

@rodan

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.

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…

@rodan

(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…)

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

@rodan

… Anyway, I forgot to mention in the last post – how about that scandal finally sticking to Vince McMahon! 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…

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.

[rodan]

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.

[fallynleaf]

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 . 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 ). 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 . 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.

[rodan]

@fallynleaf

Which… I ended up springing for . 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.

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!

@fallynleaf

So, yeah. Does anyone here think that would be a spectacularly bad idea?

Heck if I know, but I hope it goes well (and am sure it will in a supportive sort of way)!
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!

[fallynleaf]

@rodan

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!

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!

@rodan

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!

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 . 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!

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 .

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 . 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.

Thanks for the support!

[rodan]

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.

[fallynleaf]

Got the translation done a little late because I spent a long time working on that thread (which is still not complete… . 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 . 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 .

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 ? 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 .

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 ). 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 .

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 .

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 . 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… . 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 . 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!

@rodan

In the realm of probably unlikely predictions, I could see perhaps Watanabe beating Yamashita and Sakazaki to win the tournament

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 . 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!

[rodan]

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!

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.

[rodan]

@fallynleaf

ぽむさんを信じます

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!

@fallynleaf

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 ? 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.

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

Then she considers further and says that to tell the truth she’s sometimes felt self-conscious of saying 無謀なこと

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.

@fallynleaf

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??

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…)

@fallynleaf

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 .

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.

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!

[fallynleaf]

@rodan

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).

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 . 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!

[rodan]

@fallynleaf

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.”

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.

@fallynleaf

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.

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.

@fallynleaf

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 .

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).

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…

@fallynleaf

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.”

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” so the lack of one might be more worrying than the other…

@fallynleaf

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.”

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.

@fallynleaf

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.

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.

@fallynleaf

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.”

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!

@fallynleaf

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.

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!

@fallynleaf

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.”

Yep! No notes

@fallynleaf

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.

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.

@fallynleaf

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 . 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?

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

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” 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.

@fallynleaf

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… . I ended up going with “It’s… terrific (laughs)”. Though maybe there’s a better choice? It’s a weird tricky word!

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

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.

@fallynleaf

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…”

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.

@fallynleaf

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.”

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.

@fallynleaf

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 . Maybe one day I’ll find a translation for it in this context that I’m happy with. I keep changing my mind…)

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.

@fallynleaf

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.

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.
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…

[fallynleaf]

Well, at least one wrestler has found my account…

I’m assuming she found it by エゴサーチ (vanity searching). Hopefully she doesn’t disagree with my story interpretations

@rodan

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.

Would it help if I copied the full transcript into a google doc so that you could reference it? If I clear out the text every week, hopefully it shouldn’t step on shupro’s toes too much to temporarily share it. We’re both paying them plenty of money anyway .

If you have any other ideas for what would make it easier for you, feel free to suggest them! I want to find the best balance that respects your own time/energy/level of interest without placing too much pressure on you.

@rodan

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?

Sure do! Here you go:

バックステージ

伊藤「勝ちましたー！ 久しぶりの福岡、楽しかったー」

山下「楽しかったね」

伊藤「またやりたいなー。絶対また来たい。また来る」

山下「相手も中島と愛野ユキ、強かったね。でもね、燃えたね」

伊藤「ヒザ大丈夫？」

山下「やられたよ。やっぱ、中島は意地悪だし、分かってるから。なんか早々に足崩されて…最初はきつかったけど、でも応援もあって。で、伊藤のアシスト…っていうより、一緒に力合わせて勝ったね」

伊藤「そうだね。楽しかったね」

山下「いいね、地元凱旋」

伊藤「強いよね。なんかさ、地元でタッグタイトルやったら勝てるんじゃない？」

山下「そうしようか」

伊藤「つぎ福岡きて、タッグのタイトルいけそうやったらいこう」

山下「そうしよう」

伊藤「（２人だけのタッグは久しぶりでした）ホントや。なかったね」

山下「アメリカでは闘ったもんね」

伊藤「敵対してただけだったから、タッグを組んだのはホントに久しぶり」

山下「久しぶりって感覚がないくらい、普段はタッグとしての意識があんまりないね？」

伊藤「何かを一緒にやろうとするのが常じゃないから」

山下「近づいた時に一気に…」

伊藤「やろうとすればできる、みたいな」

山下「でもそれくらいが私たちの強さの秘訣？」

伊藤「なるほどね」

山下「私は離れていても好きだから」

伊藤「いいです、そういうの。やめてください」

山下「そういうの伝えてないと、またお前『私のこと好きじゃないんでしょ？』とか…」

伊藤「だってそうじゃん！ どうせカメラ回ってるからそういうこと言うんでしょ？」

山下「裏でも言います！」

伊藤「言ってない！」

山下「携帯にツーショットのプリクラ入れてます！ 入れてますか？ そもそも持ってますか？ 覚えてます？」

伊藤「…週プロのあれ？」

山下「そう。捨てたでしょ、どうせ。入れてないでしょ」

伊藤「入れてない…」

山下「こっちのセリフだよ。カメラ回ってないところで…言わないでしょ？ そういうところよ！」

伊藤「分かりました。これからは…自宅に帰ったら探してプリクラ入れます…」

@rodan

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…

They do have it! Here you go:

Here’s what she said at the start of the match:

ハイパミ「会場にお集まりの大きいちびっ子たち、こんにちは！ 東京女子プロレスの愛と平和を守るニューヒーロー、ハイパーミサヲのお出ましだー！ ここ両国国技館で8年前、私はあるハチャメチャな人物を見て、その人物にあこがれてプロレスラーを目指しました。それはほかでもない今日闘う高木三四郎だったんです。だけど今の高木三四郎の状態を皆さん知ってますか？ もう無茶しない、ハチャメチャもしない、ただただ数字を気にしてSNSで肉や寿司の写真をあげている、あんなの大社長じゃない！ ただの社長だー！ 私があこがれたレスラーがそんな状態なら、あの人にあこがれてレスラーになったこの女が、アイツの首を取る！ 私が高木三四郎に引導を渡す！ 高木三四郎を瞬殺します！ あんな状態の高木三四郎を瞬殺してもうれしくないけど、皆さん一瞬で終わるんで、目かっぽじって見届けて下さい」

And then after it was over:

ハイパミ「勝ったぞー！ 高木三四郎に、勝ったぞ！ 秒殺するって言って、勝っても嬉しくないって言ったけど、やっぱめちゃくちゃうれしー！ 高木三四郎、入場してきたとき、正直、やられたよと思った。や、やられたわもう、出オチだよと思った。メチャクチャ大人げねえよ、私のカッコするなんて。イチ経営者でも、私のカッコして、乳首まで塗られて、それで大人げなく私にいろいろ仕掛けてきて、やっぱ、やっぱ、高木三四郎、いや、大社長、やっぱ私のあこがれた、あなたはピーターパンですね！ これからもハチャメチャずっとやって、ずっとメチャクチャ無茶する経営者でいてください。あなたがピーターパンでいる限り、私は何度でもあなたの首、狙いに行きますから！ 完全勝利目指して、あなたの背中を追って、追いついてやりますから！ でたらめなままでいてください！」

高木「ミサヲ、今日、国技館に朝7時に入って、8時からずっとこの格好なんだよ。売店ロビーで社員とスタッフ全員集めて、この格好で朝礼やったんだよ。でも、みんな笑顔だったよ。たぶん両国にいる人たちも、今日笑顔で帰れるんじゃないかな!? 東京女子プロレスは、ここまで来たよ。でもこれがゴールじゃないからね。ここがスタートだよ。そしてハイパーミサヲ、オマエが8年前にオレとか葛西純とか路上プロレスで闘った人たちにあこがれたように、オマエ、オレに勝ったんだからよ、オマエが本当のヒーローだよ！ だから今度は、オマエが今日ここにいるお客さん、そしてレッスルユニバース通して見てるお客さんを、幸せにさせなきゃ、ヒーローじゃねえだろ！ オマエは今日、本当の、本物のヒーローに、なったぞー！ 最後に一言だけ言わせてくれ。東京女子プロレス、両国、おめでとー！ オレの曲かけろ！ ミュージックスタート！」

途中から涙して聞いていたハイパミだが、高木の曲がヒットしたことには抗議。そしてスタナーを食らわせ「今日勝ったのはこの私、ハイパーミサヲだ！ ミュージック、スタート！」と自身の曲をかけさせて退場。

If there’s anything else you’d like to double check, either from TJPW or any other company (I just found that they have Stardom as well!), feel free to ask, and I’ll dig up a transcript if one is available!

[rodan]

@fallynleaf

Well, at least one wrestler has found my account…

Nice! Hopefully that means she’ll see your エール too!

@fallynleaf

Would it help if I copied the full transcript into a google doc so that you could reference it? If I clear out the text every week, hopefully it shouldn’t step on shupro’s toes too much to temporarily share it. We’re both paying them plenty of money anyway .

If you have any other ideas for what would make it easier for you, feel free to suggest them! I want to find the best balance that respects your own time/energy/level of interest without placing too much pressure on you.

Oh, no worries! I can get by with the video

Posting the links to the tweets with the video + the transcript of the part you’re asking about are definitely very much appreciated, but otherwise it’s just fun to try to answer them and be helpful, and good practice / storyline engagement for me too anyway! So it’s no bother.

Besides, someday the wellspring of questions will trickle away, so I gotta appreciate my fully monopolized source of interesting questions I’m exactly the right level to answer confidently but not too confidently while it lasts! They grow up so fast…

@fallynleaf

Sure do! Here you go:

Ahhhh… it looks like I mistook “you’re just saying that because of the cameras” for “don’t say that in front of the cameras” and had extra trouble understanding the rest because of that. It sounds like Yamashita was saying she had photos of them in her phone so that’s proof she’d say it away from cameras too, and so she’s the one who should be be complaining about Itoh not showing affection off camera.

@fallynleaf

They do have it! Here you go:

repost of my own transcript just so I could compare them in the same window

ミサヲ: 勝ったぞーーーー！！高木三四郎に勝ったぞ！秒殺するっていって、勝ったも嬉しくないんといったんだけど、やっぱメチャクチャ嬉しい！高木三四郎が入場してきた時、正直、やられたのと思った。（泣）やられたはもう、出オチ台をと思った。メチャクチャ大人げねえよ、あたしの格好するなんて！一経営者だよ！私の格好して、乳首まで塗られて、それでも、大人げなく、私にいろいろしてあげてきて、やっぱ、やっぱ、高木三四郎や。大社長、やっぱあたしの憧れたあなたはピーターパンですね！これからも、ハチャメチャずっとやてえ、ずっとメチャクチャな無茶する経営者にいてください。あなたがそのピーターパンでいる限り、私は絶対なんどでもあなたの首狙いに行きますから！なんどなってもっともっと完全勝利目指して、あなたの背中、追って、追いついてやりますから。でたらめなままいてください。
高木: ミサヲ、今日、国技館で、朝四時が入って、八時からずっとこの格好んだよ。売店ロビーで社員とスタッフ全員集めて、この格好で朝礼あったんだよ。でもみんな笑顔だったよ。たぶんこの人たちも, 今日、笑顔で帰るじゃないか？東京女子プロレスは国技館できたよ、でも、これクールじゃないからね。ここはスタートだよ。そして、ハイパーミサヲ、お前が、八年前に、まあ俺とった、葛西純とか、路上プロレス戦った人たちを憧れたように、お前俺に勝ったんだから、お前が本当のヒーローだよ！だから今度は、お前が、今日来たお客さん、そして、WRESTLEUNIVERSEをとして見てるお客さんを、幸せしなきゃ、ヒーローじゃねえだぞ！お前は今日本当の本物のヒーローになったんだぞ！！！！ 最後にひとつの望み許してくれ。東京女子プロレス、両国おめでとう！！Music Start！

Hey, I did a lot better than I thought! Nice! There’s definitely some missed syllables in there, and it’s funny how my character usage and punctuation style is completely different, but on the whole not half bad!

Definitely some mistakes I could have avoided in retrospect I’m sure though, like putting:
“これクールじゃないからね。ここはスタートだよ”
instead of
“これがゴールじゃないからね。ここがスタートだよ。”

I swear her intonation on “イチ経営者でも” is still burned into my brain from playing it back enough to try to figure it out, but I at least got close with “一経営者だよ！”

Thanks for digging those up and I’ll be sure to ask if I think of another that would be useful down the line!

[fallynleaf]

I’m waiting for the TJPW VOD show to go up before I translate it, so I’ve been reading the NJPW English book in the meantime. I’m maybe about halfway through the glossary, and there’s some fun stuff in there! (Also lots of bad words. I censored them just to be safe )

I thought it was funny how they commented in the entry for “heel” that it sounds like 和製英語(わせいえいご), but is English.

Also, it teaches the word “bastard”, but warns that it’s not used in regular daily conversation, the TOEIC test (I had to look up what this is ), or business English, of course.

I actually learned a new English phrase! One of the words in here is “bollocks”, which I already knew, but I had never heard “the dog’s bollocks” before. Apparently it means “the best thing”, contrary to the usual meaning of the word, haha.

It also used the phrase “首洗って待っとけ！” to explain “Get ready!” and I got excited because I remembered seeing 首洗って in a very old DDT translation I did and not knowing what on earth to do with it (me: “Wash your neck? What??”). A couple of my friends informed me that it refers to a traditional means of preparation before execution via decapitation, so they thought “get ready” isn’t actually threatening enough. One of my friends said she translates the above phrase more like “prepare to die.”

This sent me down a bit of a google rabbit hole, because I was curious how other people were translating it. It was kind of funny because there didn’t seem to be a real consensus! Pretty much every site I looked at had a different suggestion. I appreciated this post, which appears to be part of a series called “Hey, Boss! There’s no English for that!” It talks about the difficulty of translating that phrase, and why various choices are unsuitable.

The author of that post thinks “be prepared” is too weak, so they probably wouldn’t approve of NJPW’s choice of “get ready!”, haha. The translation they suggested was “just you wait and see.”

So, I went to see how I’d translated it back in… December 2021 ( ). The specific phrase the wrestler was quoted as using was: “首洗って、覚悟して待っとけ.” And I went with… “So wash your neck and brace yourself.”

Honestly? Not too bad. The “wash your neck” part reads a bit strangely in English, but I think “brace yourself” gets the point across well enough.

Something that I thought was funny in the NJPW English book was in the entry for “shit”, they also mentioned “piece of shit”, and there was a note about Kenny saying the phrase which directed me to a short interview earlier in the book. I’d skipped it initially because it was all in Japanese, but I went back and skimmed the section in question, and it was pretty funny! The translator talked about the difficulty of translating Kenny calling Tana a piece of shit at the end of 2018. EDIT: Just realized I forgot to add what the translator eventually settled on for “piece of shit”. It was “ポンコツ野郎”.

It’s fun reading about the translation problems that people have to deal with on the other side of the equation, haha.

The NJPW book says that “guy” means “man,” but as an expression can also refer to women, which is true, but it says to note that “dude(s)” is only used for men, which is pretty spectacularly false, actually .

I liked the note for “aggressive” which said that a Spanish translator whom the writer knows translated the Spanish word for aggressive (I had to look this one up. It’s “agresivo”) as 好戦的(こうせんてき), and the writer thought that was really classy, so they’ve been copying them ever since.

Also, the book says (in the entry for “backstage”) that Jay and Zack’s backstage interviews are must-see for English learners. This made a few of my friends laugh because some of Jay’s and Zack’s interviews are nearly incomprehensible even to us, native English speakers.

For the entry on “biting” it says that of course this is illegal, so you have to stop within the 5 count.

And “spoiler alert” is one phrase that is taught in this book as well as the book on fandom vocab I have (which is the same genre of book). It’s ネタバレ注意. (“Bias” is also in both books, but the usage in the fandom book is not the same as the usage of the word here ).

All in all, the book is going pretty well for me so far! I added it to Natively, but had some trouble rating its difficulty score. I went with “lower intermediate” because I feel like it’s above my current level (and considering the lack of furigana, which isn’t a problem for me personally, but might deter others), but the copious amounts of English makes it easier. Somehow, I don’t expect a lot of other folks on the site to read this one, so my ratings might weight it pretty heavily…

Also, I saw this image from shupro in this tweet and almost considered trying to read the article, but decided it probably wasn’t the best use of my time at the moment. I’ll just appreciate the photo from afar. I believe she’s holding a bouquet of daisies, which is a nice touch. EDIT: Nope, it’s sunflowers !

One last note I wanted to mention is that there have been some more Kota Ibushi tweets. Some negative stuff about NJPW, but also something positive! He mentioned wanting to come to AEW for at least a few times (his health permitting, as his injury still hasn’t healed), and he specifically mentioned wrestling as the Golden Lovers! He also named Adam Page when asked who he wanted to fight.

Seeing that really cheered me up. The Golden Lovers story lives on, despite everything…

[fallynleaf]

I managed to watch and translate the August 7 TJPW show in just two days!

There’s no recap for this one, but I did want to share this photo:

The main thing going on in this show is that it was Kamiyu’s return to her hometown! She even presented a portion of the proceeds from the show as a donation to the town, I believe for scholarships.

I’ll start with the easy stuff. The show had a preview match for Suzume vs Yuka. Yuka was… not exactly impressed with Suzume in the match.

In her post-match comments, she said:

It’s a very nice environment here, full of nature. It’s a place where a free spirit like Kamifuku grew up. I’m glad she could make a triumphant return. (You faced Suzume before the semifinals) Yes. She’s still the Suzume I know, so I didn’t feel any sense of danger or anything like that in this match. I’m looking forward to her dramatic transformation on the appointed day in the tournament. Right now, I don’t feel like she’s a threat at all.

I was got a little stuck on translating 化けてくる in this line: “これでトーナメント当日どう化けてくるのかっていうのは楽しみではありますね”, but went with “dramatic transformation” because it seemed like maybe that conveyed the same feeling? I dunno .

Suzume said:

It was Kamiyu-san’s return show, so I was happy to come to Fujisawa for the first time, but in the preview match for the tournament, I wasn’t able to save Tori-san at the end… It’s a frustrating result, but I still felt anxious in front of a big wall. But there’s still time, so I want to be sure to face Yuka-san bravely before Korakuen.

The last half of her comment was a little tricky for me: “悔しい結果になったんですけど、まだまだ大きな壁を前に焦ってるなって感じがしました、自分の中で。でも、まだ時間があるので後楽園までにしっかりユカさんに立ち向かえるようにしていきたいと思います.”

I wasn’t quite sure how to interpret 焦ってる, but ended up going with “anxious” because it seemed most straightforward. I also wasn’t sure exactly how to convey しっかり, but went with “bravely” because it seemed like she was mostly talking about wanting to face Yuka without 焦ってる.

And now, the hard stuff… Kamiyu’s comments .

I think I did okay on the first part of what she said in-ring?

Kamifuku: “I won. I wondered what I’d have done if I hadn’t won (laughs).”

Itoh: “That’s impossible! Everyone was cheering for you.”

Kamifuku: “Thank you for coming from all over to Shonandai today.”

Itoh: “Thank you!”

Kamifuku: “And thank you for coming to see TJPW, which I love almost as much as my hometown. And since this was a charity show, truly thank you all so much for your support. I used to come here all the time when I was a student.”

This next part was tricky for a few reasons:

伊藤「そうなんだ。有名なんだね」

上福「私はね、チャリティー興行とかいうてますけど、学生の頃は特に趣味とか夢中になるものとか、熱心に何か夢を見つけることがなかなかできなかったの。でも東京女子に出会って、夢を見つけたり、一個一個叶えたり…（涙）この興行も、私の中で芽生えた大きな大きな夢でした。こうやって地元のみなさんにたくさん協力してもらえたから、今日という日を迎えられました。ホントにありがとうございます。これからもっと湘南台を活気づけて、すごいおいしいラーメン屋さんとか小さなオシャレなバーとか、六本木よりイケてるところがたくさんあるの」

伊藤「そうなんだ。いいところなんだね」

The そうなんだ’s gave me a little bit of trouble, because I’m not used to translating those, so I sort of just tried my best . I also wasn’t sure what Itoh was exactly calling 有名なんだね, but I’m assuming it’s the place? And Kamiyu’s whole paragraph there caused me a lot of trouble, haha. Here was what I ended up with:

Itoh: “Ah, it’s famous.”

Kamifuku: “For me, concerning the charity show and all that, when I was a student, I wasn’t able to find any particular hobbies or anything I was crazy about, and I didn’t have any passionate dreams. But when I found TJPW, I found my dream, and one-by-one my wishes were granted… (cries). This charity show was also a big, big dream that sprouted inside of me. It’s thanks to all of the support from everyone from my hometown that I was able to see you all on a day like today. Thank you so, so much. From now on, I’m going to liven up Shonandai even more; the amazing ramen restaurants, the tiny dressed up bars, there are lots of places that are more stylish than Roppongi.”

Itoh: “Yeah, it seems like a nice place.”

Here’s the rest of the in-ring stuff:

Kamifuku: “I’m so happy that I was able to come back here with my friends from Tokyo. Thank you.”

Itoh: “You’re welcome."

Kamifuku: “Everyone, thank you, too. I’ve lived such an enjoyable life with the dreams I have, so everyone, hold onto your dreams and goals, cherish your friends and family, and day by day, do your best and keep living!”

“Thank you, hometown! Thank you, friends! Yay!”

The tricky part for me here was Kamiyu’s second paragraph, in particular the last part of the second sentence: “みんなもありがとう。私ね、夢を持ってこんなに楽しい人生を送れたから、みんなも夢とか目標とか持って、仲間も家族も大事にして、１日１日頑張ってみんなで生きていきましょう！”

For the post-match comments, here’s what I had:

Kamifuku: “I never thought in my wildest dreams that this Shonandai show would be held.”

Itoh: “But you’ve been saying all along that you wanted to make a triumphant return.”

Kamifuku: “Yes, I was saying it. But after all is said and done… Now that the mayor has left, I can say that Fujisawa has too many delinquents.”

Itoh: “I have that impression.”

Then Kamiyu said:

非行に走る、そういう子が多いので。夢とか見つけずにさ、悪いことばっかする子が多いと言われているのでね。そういう子たちに夢とかやりたいこととかを見せてあげられたらいいなって、東京女子をきっかけに何か調べてもらってさ。この子はこういうところからこういう人になったんだとかさ、してもらって。みんなが輝けるように私は応援しております。いや、大変だった.

I wasn’t quite sure about the middle two sentences in particular. Here’s what I had:

There are lots of children turning to delinquency. It is said that there are a lot of children who don’t have any dreams, so they do bad things instead. I thought it would be good if I could show these children my dreams and the things I want to do, so I asked them to look for something using TJPW as inspiration. How this girl from a place like this could become someone like this, think about that. I’m supporting them so that everyone can shine. Yes, it was hard.

Itoh said, “You were so nervous,” and then Kamiyu said:

めちゃめちゃ緊張したし、でも、東京女子プロレスって私が東京に出てからどんな飲み会よりもどんな有名人との食事会よりも、何よりもずば抜けて一番の宝物になったなって今回より思えたし。そういう東京出ていくって決めて、親に啖呵切って、一人暮らしを始めていろんなことがありましたよ。詐欺師みたいな男と付き合って別れたり、いろんなことがあったんですけど。でも、やっぱこうやってそこで出会えた宝物をふるさとにブリングバックするっていうのは、すごくありがたいことだなって思ったし。今回興行やるにあたって全然ぽーいってしちゃってた地元の友達たちが『うちラーメン屋やってるから（ポスター）貼ってやるよ』とか協力もしてくれて。あらためてどんなことよりも仲間とか家族とか人っていうのは財産なんだなってことに気付けました。アラサーです。ありがとうございます。

The first two sentences were a little hard, especially 親に啖呵切って, which I had to look up and still didn’t feel like I quite understood .

I also struggled with this sentence: “今回興行やるにあたって全然ぽーいってしちゃってた地元の友達たちが『うちラーメン屋やってるから（ポスター）貼ってやるよ』とか協力もしてくれて.”

Here’s what I had for the whole thing:

I was extremely nervous, but now more than ever, I felt that TJPW has become my greatest treasure above anything else since I moved to Tokyo, more than any drinking party, and more than any dinner with a celebrity. After moving to Tokyo, I exchanged harsh words with my parents, and started living alone, and many other things happened. I dated and broke up with a guy who was a cheater, and so on. But nonetheless, I’m so grateful that I was able to bring back the treasure I’d found to my hometown. When we did this show, my local friends who had been so nonchalant said stuff like, ‘We run a ramen shop, so we’ll put up posters for you,’ and collaborated with us. Once again, I realized that friends, family, and people are bigger assets than anything else. I’m around thirty. Thank you.

I learned that アラサー just means “around 30 (years old)”, but apparently it can have the nuance of “I will never be young again,” or “I should seriously think about marriage soon.”

They ask Kamiyu about the next time they hold this event, and she said:

第２回やるとしたら、オーディションしたいですね。最近、朝倉未来さんとかがやってるじゃん。そんなかんじで藤沢の気合入ったギャル、もしくはヤンキー、もしくは引きこもり。その３人のなかでオーディションして東京女子に入れさせる。藤沢さわやかキャンペーンをおこないます。よろしくお願いします

The third and fourth sentences were tricky for me. Here’s what I had:

If we do it again, I want to hold an audition. Mikuru Asakura-san and others have been doing that recently. With that sort of feeling, a gal from Fujisawa with fighting spirit, or a delinquent, or a shut-in. I’d like to hold an audition and have someone join TJPW from among those three. I’m carrying out a campaign to reinvigorate Fujisawa. I look forward to working with you.

Then it seems like Itoh and Kamiyu basically roleplay this scenario out?

Itoh: “The person who passes the audition will become a pro wrestler.”

Kamifuku: “Let’s start from the beginning as a trainee. From cleaning the floors with a rag.”

Itoh: “She debuts in Fujisawa, and her opponent is…”

Kamifuku: “Yuki. I’ll be waiting.”

Itoh: “I’m looking forward to it.”

The interviewer asked about Yuna’s participation in the show, and Kamiyu said, “いたね。まなせさん来てくれました。でもまなせさんはね、家族ぐるみでね。うちの実家のお風呂に平気で入っていくような人なんですよ.”

I wasn’t sure how to interpret “でもまなせさんはね、家族ぐるみでね.” Here’s what I went with:

She did. Manase-san came for my sake. But Manase-san, she’s part of the family. She’s the kind of person who’d take a bath at my parents’ house without batting an eyelid.

Itoh responds “それはね…いやです” (“That’s… gross”).

Then Kamiyu finishes with:

うちの家族全員に会ってて、藤沢に来てくれて。ちょいちょいのポイントで東京女子の試合にも絡んできてくれる人で。こんなね、どうせ東京からきたら最低でも１時間はかかるんでね。どんぶらこっこ来てくれたんですよ。なんで、きっと何か企んでるんだろうなって思うんですけど、まなせさんのことはデビューしてちゃんとしたシングルで勝ててないので。どっか東京女子の場でも何でも使って、いつかぶっ倒したいと思います

I think I actually did okay with this? The only part that really confused me was どんぶらこっこ来てくれたんですよ. Apparently どんぶらこっこ is an onomatopoeic word for something flowing (mainly down a river). I ended up translating it fairly literally, because I didn’t know what else to do with it .

Here was the final result:

She met my entire family and came to Fujisawa. She’s someone who comes to TJPW every now and then and gets involved in matches. In any case, it takes an hour minimum to get here from Tokyo. She came like a peach flowing down a river. Why? Surely she’s up to something. But Manase-san, given that I haven’t won a singles match with her since my debut, I’d like to beat her someday, whether that’s at TJPW or somewhere else.

I’m… excited but also a little bit afraid for the double Korakuen shows coming up. No idea how long it’ll take me to finish translating those, but I guess I’ll just have to try my best, haha.

[rodan]

@fallynleaf

In her post-match comments, she said:

It’s a very nice environment here, full of nature. It’s a place where a free spirit like Kamifuku grew up. I’m glad she could make a triumphant return. (You faced Suzume before the semifinals) Yes. She’s still the Suzume I know, so I didn’t feel any sense of danger or anything like that in this match. I’m looking forward to her dramatic transformation on the appointed day in the tournament. Right now, I don’t feel like she’s a threat at all.

I was got a little stuck on translating 化けてくる in this line: “これでトーナメント当日どう化けてくるのかっていうのは楽しみではありますね”, but went with “dramatic transformation” because it seemed like maybe that conveyed the same feeling? I dunno .

The transformation part is fine, but I’d point out the どう, and “I’m looking forward to her dramatic transformation on the appointed day in the tournament” sounds maybe more active to me than the original, which sounds to me more like, idle curiosity shared between Yuka and the audience about wondering how Suzume’ll transform for the tournament.
Combined, I would maybe go with something like “It’ll be interesting to see how she’ll step up to the occasion.”

@fallynleaf

Suzume said:

It was Kamiyu-san’s return show, so I was happy to come to Fujisawa for the first time, but in the preview match for the tournament, I wasn’t able to save Tori-san at the end… It’s a frustrating result, but I still felt anxious in front of a big wall. But there’s still time, so I want to be sure to face Yuka-san bravely before Korakuen.

The last half of her comment was a little tricky for me: “悔しい結果になったんですけど、まだまだ大きな壁を前に焦ってるなって感じがしました、自分の中で。でも、まだ時間があるので後楽園までにしっかりユカさんに立ち向かえるようにしていきたいと思います.”

I wouldn’t say “I still felt anxious in front of a big wall” is wrong, but I would say it could be spruced up a bit with preserving more the sense of the originally that she’s painting a figurative picture to describe her state internally. Also, more of the momentum/impending danger - the wall is the match/Yuka, and the 焦ってる is I’d say particularly the kind of anxiety of having to do something about it, soon.
“I still felt inside like I’m rushing towards a great wall” is probably the kind of second pass I would give it.

I think “bravely” is a good natural sounding non-literal pick for しっかり here!

@fallynleaf

Itoh: “Ah, it’s famous.”

Kamifuku: “For me, concerning the charity show and all that, when I was a student, I wasn’t able to find any particular hobbies or anything I was crazy about, and I didn’t have any passionate dreams. But when I found TJPW, I found my dream, and one-by-one my wishes were granted… (cries). This charity show was also a big, big dream that sprouted inside of me. It’s thanks to all of the support from everyone from my hometown that I was able to see you all on a day like today. Thank you so, so much. From now on, I’m going to liven up Shonandai even more; the amazing ramen restaurants, the tiny dressed up bars, there are lots of places that are more stylish than Roppongi.”

Itoh: “Yeah, it seems like a nice place.”

I think this is good!
A few really small things:

• オシャレな here would just mean like, cool, hip, stylish, fashionable! You know, the kind of bar Kamiyu would be into.
• In the 夢を見つけたり、一個一個叶えたり part, I’d say they’re plural 夢 and those are the things she’s fulfilling (sounds kinda hard to phrase non-awkwardly that way in english though)
• そうなんだ I’d say would just be like, confirmation + surprise, like “oh, huh!” or “wow!” I would probably mainly just use them here as a tip that you should use exclamation marks for those parts! It seems a lot more rare for the Japanese transcript to use anything other than a period, but it would almost certainly be more natural in English to use exclamation marks to show that surprise/enthusiasm factor that’s conveyed in the original by stuff like そうなんだ. I’d be throwing in more exclamation points all over the place!
• I think it’s probably Kamiyu who’s 有名なんだね, in the sense of like - now she’s headlining a show at a venue she attended a lot as a kid - look how far she’s come, that kind of thing.

@fallynleaf

Kamifuku: “Everyone, thank you, too. I’ve lived such an enjoyable life with the dreams I have, so everyone, hold onto your dreams and goals, cherish your friends and family, and day by day, do your best and keep living!”

The one small tweak I’d make is “and day by day, let’s all do our best and keep living!!”

@fallynleaf

There are lots of children turning to delinquency. It is said that there are a lot of children who don’t have any dreams, so they do bad things instead. I thought it would be good if I could show these children my dreams and the things I want to do, so I asked them to look for something using TJPW as inspiration. How this girl from a place like this could become someone like this, think about that. I’m supporting them so that everyone can shine. Yes, it was hard.

Only note about this is the 大変だった is after a pretty lengthy pause after the previous stuff, and it connects more with the next stuff they talk about (it’s what prompts Itoh’s comment about her having been nervous). The いや、is sorta the transition from talking big to like, breaking from the speechifying and admitting it was tough/strenuous. So while this isn’t a very good translation, I’d say it conveys roughly like, “… geez, that was a hell of a thing. I’m pooped!”

@fallynleaf

After moving to Tokyo, I exchanged harsh words with my parents, and started living alone, and many other things happened.

The chronology is a bit off here - “東京出ていくって決めて、親に啖呵切って、一人暮らしを始めて” is she decided to leave for Tokyo, informed her parents, and started living alone, in that order. I’m also not ultra familiar with 啖呵切って, but I looked around a bit and I think kotobank was clearest to me in forming my impression that it’s about her firmly informing her parents of her decision (rather than necessarily a fight or them objecting and scolding her which I thought maybe at first).

@fallynleaf

a guy who was a cheater

I don’t think this fits 詐欺師みたいな男 – the original is more like I think, he was some kind of sketchy not upfront dude who was trying to take advantage of her or other people by lying or misrepresenting himself. Like the kind of stereotypical big city dude who might take advantage of a girl who’d just moved there. “like a swindler”, not necessarily “cheater”

@fallynleaf

my local friends who had been so nonchalant

I don’t know how exactly to phrase it in English, but I think she’s saying more like – the local friends who she dropped contact with / abandoned.
Like, ぽーい is the kind of thing you might say when throwing a paper ball in the trash, or she makes a brushing-away motion when she says it. So I think she’s talking about leaving and dropping them, but now them being nice enough to help her.

@fallynleaf

Then it seems like Itoh and Kamiyu basically roleplay this scenario out?

Yeah, it’s a joke from the start – I’d say from the video and the chuckles that the tone is more like, her straight-facedly declaring she’s going to hold this silly-sounding audition as a bit, and her and Itoh riffing on it for a little while.

@fallynleaf

The interviewer asked about Yuna’s participation in the show, and Kamiyu said, “いたね。まなせさん来てくれました。でもまなせさんはね、家族ぐるみでね。うちの実家のお風呂に平気で入っていくような人なんですよ.”

I wasn’t sure how to interpret “でもまなせさんはね、家族ぐるみでね.” Here’s what I went with:

She did. Manase-san came for my sake. But Manase-san, she’s part of the family. She’s the kind of person who’d take a bath at my parents’ house without batting an eyelid.

Yeah, the 家族ぐるみ is quickly supported by the bath thing, so I think it’s just saying that Manase is / is like family to Kamiyu.
The comparison sounds a bit odd in English, but I presume she’s talking about の実家のお風呂 because of how Japanese families share bathwater, and so joining in on that with no qualms would indeed be a mark of really being like family.

[fallynleaf]

WHEW okay, I got TJPW’s August 13 Korakuen Hall show (the TPC semifinals) done! Here’s the recap for posterity, though I didn’t reference it.

The tournament had some, uh, spicy results, shall we say, but I had a good time, so I tried my best to ignore the twitter discourse .

I did find out that unfortunately, shupro doesn’t transcribe all of the comments. So I’ll start with the ones just on twitter:

First up, Shoko vs Kaya Toribami! A fun fact about Kaya is that she and Shoko trained together (Shoko has done stunt training), and that’s sort of how Kaya was brought into TJPW. Their first singles match last year was a genuinely great match, despite the fact that it was right after Kaya’s debut, so they have great chemistry.

In Shoko’s comments, she said that she was in the opening match for the first time in a long time, and it has also been a while since she’s had a singles match with Kaya. Then she said: “ここからトーナメントの結果を見届けるためにも自分も自分で積み上げられるものはコツコツ積み上げていきたいという気持ちで今日は試合をしました.”

I got tripped up over various parts of this. Here was my attempt? “Seeing the results of the tournament from here, I wrestled today with a feeling of wanting to keep accumulating experience for myself and by myself.”

I think I understood Kaya’s comment well enough:

She utterly beat me. Our last match was the match immediately following my debut, so this was our first singles match in a year. I’ve gotten a little better, and I understand just how high that wall is. I want to be able to show everyone that I’ve grown and improved.

The next match was Free WiFi vs Raku and Yuki Aino.

In Nao’s comment, the second sentence gave me trouble: “やっぱり定期的にふりーWiFi組んでもらわないと！” I also wasn’t quite sure what she meant in her last line. Here was my translation for the whole thing:

Kakuta: “At the end, I won and bounced back. We need to tag as Free WiFi more on a regular basis!”

Hikari: “Today was Yuki-san’s return match, but it was a little scary because I didn’t sense any ring rust.”

Kakuta: “I wonder if Raku-chan was also trying especially hard today.”

In Raku and Yuki’s comment, I was a little confused by Yuki’s: “そういうこと？ こんなに休んだことなかった不安だったんですけど、らくと一緒に入場してそれまでのうっ憤が吹き飛びました.” I wasn’t sure exactly what she was talking about with うっ憤 . Here was my attempt:

Raku: “Today the bullet train was delayed due to the typhoon, so I was late, too.”

Yuki: “Was that it? I was anxious because I’d never taken time off like this, but when I entered together with Raku, all of my pent-up feelings disappeared.”

Arisu Endo fought visiting guest Mei Suruga, in a match that Mr. Haku was jokingly referring to as a “Suzume on a pole match”, since both of them are tag partners of hers. Unfortunately Arisu’s first singles victory still eludes her.

I think I did okay with these? I made a slightly bold translation decision with Mei’s (I went with it because the fandom 英語 book I have suggested “stan” for ～を推す), so hopefully this doesn’t result in Mei finding my translation and making a tweet that says: “English words learned today: stan” . Here was my translation:

Mei: “I’ve been a little curious about Arisu-chan for a long time. After this singles match, I’ve come to love her. In Arisu-chan’s hometown show, I’ll be cheering for her as an Arisu stan! Everyone, do your best! Fight!”

And here was Arisu’s:

Endo: “I still haven’t won a singles match on my own, and I thought that if I beat Mei-san here, I’d be able to show everyone how cool I am, but I was way too optimistic. It was as if I’d been pulled into Mei-san’s world. It’s frustrating, but I think it’s because I haven’t trained enough, so I’m going to keep working hard.”

The next match was one I was really, really excited about. It was a 3-way match between Misao, Rika, and Mizuki. I think I’ve talked about these individual dynamics before, but basically: Misao is in love with Rika, but Rika is in love with Mizuki, and Mizuki does not particularly like either of them, but also she’s not above exploiting people’s affections if it gives her a temporary advantage.

The wrestlers themselves billed this one as a “love triangle match” (the second one this year after Yuki Aino vs Raku vs Pom). Mr. Haku helpfully translated some of the in-ring for it, and it was pretty funny because at the beginning, Misao claimed that part of the love triangle was mutual because she got Rika’s photo at the merch table, and Rika has green highlights in her hair, which can mean only one thing.

Rika got Mizuki to agree to work with her, only to get betrayed at the earliest possible opportunity. And, well, from there things got pretty messy, haha, with lots of unintentional friendly fire from one wrestler toward the target of her affection.

I was very bummed to see that shupro elected not to transcribe these. How could they deprive us of such vital lore details?? Thankfully, the twitter captions had quite a lot.

With Misao’s comment, I had trouble with the first line: “最後めちゃくちゃカタいものが私の胸を打ち抜いた……私がスプレーやったからかー！” Here was my attempt:

Misao: “At the end, something hard pierced me right through the chest… Because the cold spray was my doing! I wonder why I can never convey my love to Rika-san… Is it because of Mizu-pyon? But I’m going to keep doing my best until my strength is conveyed. #I love Rika Tatsumi!”

Rika’s was straightforward enough. She said:

Rika: “It’s totally and completely Hyper Misao’s fault. I think this has made Mizu-pyon reevaluate, and I think next time we’ll definitely be able to form a Dorapyon tag team, so higher-ups, please put us together in a Dorapyon tag match! I think this laid the groundwork for that!”

For Mizuki’s, the part that confused me was her third sentence: “多分意見合わへんから……” Here was my attempt at the whole thing:

Mizuki: “I thought it would be a tough 3-way, but it was way harder than I’d imagined… This made me think that I absolutely don’t want to team with Rika-san. We probably don’t agree with each other… I don’t want to win by teaming up with Rika-san; I want to win by myself.”

Next was Pom Harajuku vs Max the Impaler, which was about as perfect a wrestling match as you can imagine. I think Max might be the best guest that TJPW has had thus far? The Japanese fans took to them instantly.

Shupro gave me a transcription for Pom’s comment, thankfully! There were a few lines that were confusing to me, so I’ll post the part with the confusing bits:

ちょっと何があったか分からないですけど、あれはホントに実在しますか？ ホントに途中でワケわからなくなって帰りたくなったんですけど…あの時帰っておけばよかったなんて思いました。やばいよ、何アレ。ツイッターでたくさん見たけど、あんなに怖いと思わなかったし。ぽむ、ホントに宙を浮くってこういうことだなって思ったし、敵わなかったんですけど。

I was a little unsure with “ホントに途中でワケわからなくなって帰りたくなったんですけど”, and with “ぽむ、ホントに宙を浮くってこういうことだなって思ったし、敵わなかったんですけど.”

Here’s what I had for the full comment:

Pom: “I don’t really understand what happened, but was that person really real? I really didn’t know what was going on as it was happening and wanted to go home, but… I should have left then. Oh man, what was that person? I saw a lot of them on twitter, but I didn’t expect them to be THAT scary. I thought, ‘Pom, you’re really floating through the air’, and I was no match for them. But, now that I know that my shin kicks work even on someone who is that scary, I’m going to keep working to master shin attacks. But I never want to see them again. I thought my remains were going to get scattered all over Korakuen, to the north, east, south, and west. But I was still there. Thank goodness… I don’t remember anything else.”

Max didn’t say, uh, words in their comment (in English or Japanese), but I’m including it because it’s fun

This show had so much going on, I think I’m going to split up my posts about it so that it’s not a super gigantic block . I’ll post about the latter half of the show tomorrow!

[rodan]

@fallynleaf

In Shoko’s comments, she said that she was in the opening match for the first time in a long time, and it has also been a while since she’s had a singles match with Kaya. Then she said: “ここからトーナメントの結果を見届けるためにも自分も自分で積み上げられるものはコツコツ積み上げていきたいという気持ちで今日は試合をしました.”

I got tripped up over various parts of this. Here was my attempt? “Seeing the results of the tournament from here, I wrestled today with a feeling of wanting to keep accumulating experience for myself and by myself.”

She was a guest on commentary for the rest of the card after the first few matches, so I’d say the “ここからトーナメントの結果を見届ける” part is referring to that. After this promo she’s going to have a first-hand look at how the tournament progresses (by being on commentary), and so partly that’s why she had this match (since guest commentary from someone who had an early match on the show is very common) but she’s saying also she did it to build up experience.
The 自分も自分で part sounds to me like it’s just emphasizing that (in contrast to that first reason) she also had the match for herself and her growth. I found one source that lists it as a grammar point anyway (it seems hard to google). I’d also say, anyway, that it connects with 積み上げられるもの, as like, the stuff she can accumulate/improve on within/about herself.
I would put it all as something like:
“Today I wrestled in part, yes, so that I can go out now and get a first-hand look at how the tournament goes, but also for myself, because I want to keep working to steadily improve where I can, and this match helped me do that.”

@fallynleaf

I’ve gotten a little better, and I understand just how high that wall is.

For this part, the 分 in the original gives it a structure/flavor, of like, “I’ve improved a little, but that just means I’m that much more able to see how high the (metaphorical) wall is” - like a seeing how far you’ve come just makes it easier to comprehend how far you still have to go, type of deal. there’s a stack exchange post about it that suggests it’s the same as in (the more easily look upable) その分.

@fallynleaf

I was a little confused by Yuki’s: “そういうこと？ こんなに休んだことなかった不安だったんですけど、らくと一緒に入場してそれまでのうっ憤が吹き飛びました.” I wasn’t sure exactly what she was talking about with うっ憤 . Here was my attempt:

The tweet bunches it up a bit – the “そういうこと？” is her comment on Raku’s comment, and then they separately transition into talking about the other topic. It sounds like Yuki took off from two matches, but it meant a total of three weeks off? And so she was uneasy since she hadn’t been out that long of a time off before.
For うっ憤, weblio gives “内にこもりつもった怒りや不満。晴れないうらみ。” so I’m sure she’s mainly just talking about that 不安 she was talking about. If there’s an 怒り or うらみ component it would probably just be at whatever was causing the break if it was out of her control, or in kayfabe, the tournament loss that preceded it.

@fallynleaf

if I beat Mei-san here, I’d be able to show everyone how cool I am

One nitpick here is I would describe the original more like, “If I beat Mei-san here, I’d get to look incredibly cool in front of everyone” - like, she’d get to show a めっちゃカッコいい姿 not that she herself is inherently めっちゃカッコいい.

@fallynleaf

“最後めちゃくちゃカタいものが私の胸を打ち抜いた……私がスプレーやったからかー！”

Well, she’s definitely thinking through the finish, which involved (among other things) 1. Rika trying to spray Misao, 2. Misao ducking so the spray incapacitates the ref (I enjoyed his dramatic “pause 目が！！！” a lot here), 3. Rika hitting Misao in the chest with the can 4. Rika pulling the ref over and winning.
The twitter text cuts out a little part in the middle where she wonders something about the ref, so I would speculate that the specific thing she’s confused by could be why Rika was able to hit her with the can without being disqualified, with the answer she figures out being oh right, she intentionally made sure he got hit with the spray earlier, oops!
Or if not that specific, then in any case yeah, the second part is her figuring out through consulting her memory that her loss was ultimately because of her spray. The からか I would note here gives it like, an “oh, so it was X, eh?!” type of flavor - yours kinda drops the か

@fallynleaf

多分意見合わへんから

Sounds like Mizuki’s from Kansai! (yep, Kobe apparently). The へん here is like ない. So yeah, she doesn’t want to team with Rika-san since they probably don’t agree with each other. (bit of a catch-22 there for Rika, since it doesn’t sound like she agrees about this either…)

@fallynleaf

ホントに途中でワケわからなくなって帰りたくなったんですけど

I really didn’t know what was going on as it was happening and wanted to go home

The nuance missed here is that the “途中でXなって” part conveys not “during it, I was X” but “in the middle of it, I became X” - in the middle of the match she came to be in such a state of not not really making heads or tails of anything anymore and just wanting to go home. (頑張って -Raku)

@fallynleaf

“ぽむ、ホントに宙を浮くってこういうことだなって思ったし、敵わなかったんですけど.”

Having a bit of trouble going directly into English for this one too,
but she thought, that this → [ホントに宙を浮く] is this → [こういうこと], and that’s one of the reasons she was no match for them. Like - “so this is what it means to really be midair” to try to put it literally.

I guess I’d put the meaning conveyed like this:

“oh my god I’m literally midair right now”
(from the spot right before she tries to leave the match)