One more time, One more chance - Yamasaki Masayoshi

So I’m beginning a new project next semester where I’ll be translating Japanese music into English. For those who understand Olin speak, I’m doing my AHS capstone. This blog is just a pilot for the real deal starting next February.

If you don’t know already, I really like singing, and since picking up the ukulele two years ago in UOCD it’s only given me more excuses to hear myself sing. I’ve slowly grown a small repertoire of Japanese songs since returning back from Japan. And like all haphazard jamming I often find myself stopping midway through songs because I’m mumbling through too many words I can’t read. So the thought was, why not take something that I like doing anyway and turn it into a learning opportunity.

The song I picked for this time is “One more time, One more chance” by Yamasaki Masayoshi. I came across a cover of this song done by Goose house on Youtube and it just got stuck in my head right before Thanksgiving break when I was suppose to do this test trial. It’s has a really nice melancholy melody that has an undulating feel to it.

I made a few mistakes (forgive me m(,_,)m)

Next semester I’m planning on doing the footage on a nicer camera and mic setup, but for now it’ll just be my phone camera.

Jiaying’s Original Translation (Japanese Lyrics):

If I lose anymore of you, I won’t forgive myself

I would endure any pain if only I could meet you again

One more time, holding the seasons still

One more time, back when we fooled around

In our arguments, I was always the first to break

But your selfishness made me love you all the more

One more chance, my memories are fuzzy

One more chance, where should I look next...

I’m always searching, hoping somewhere I’d find you

At the house across mine, in a window in an alleyway,

Though you probably wouldn’t be there

If my wish was granted, I’d have you by my side

There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to have you in my arms

If only to distract myself from my loneliness, anyone would be fine

But on this starry night, I can’t fool myself

One more time, holding the seasons still

One more time, back when we fooled around

I’m always searching, hoping somewhere I’d find you

At an intersection, in my dreams,

Though you probably wouldn’t be there

If this miracle would occur

I could show you a new dawn

And tell you the “I love you” that I never said

Summer’s nostalgias returns

my heart suddenly stops

I’m always searching, hoping somewhere I’d find you

Early morning on the streets, in the town with the sakura trees,

Though you probably wouldn’t be there

If my wish was granted, I’d have you by my side

There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to have you in my arms

I’m always searching hoping somewhere I’d find your fragments

At a reststop store, in the corner of the newspaper

Though they probably wouldn’t be there

If this miracle would occur

I could show you a new dawn

And tell you the “I love you” that I never said

And I’m still searching hoping somewhere I’d see your smile

At a train stop along the tracks

Though you probably wouldn’t be there

If we believe that life is something that repeats,

I will always choose to be by your side

There is nothing more important to me, than you

Jiaying’s thoughts:

You really get a feel for how Japanese is structured differently from English by translating. A lot of the translated lyrics feel “backwards” like yoda speak, and there are definitely lots of commas which make things translate a little strange.

I don’t know if you get this feeling from the lyrics, but for me it kinda feels like this person’s significant other died…? Maybe not at first, but when it gets to the whole fragments part and the whole reincarnation part I’m definately like “ahhhhhh nooooooo.” This could definitely be an animated film.

Also Japanese songs feel sooo long...

Appendix

*Please let me know if something does not seem correct or if you would like to supplement what’s already here

何かおかしいと思ったら、正しいのを教えて下さい。

Vocabulary

Kanji	Kana	English
移ろう	うつろう	To change; to fade
巫山戯る	ふざける	To mess around; to joke
食い違う	くいちがう	To oppose; to clash
尚更	なおさら	All the more
愛しくさせる	あいしくさせる	To make me love
記憶	きおく	Memories
足を取られる	あしをとられる	To get tripped up
	どっか	Somewhere; anywhere
向かい	むかい	Opposite
	かける	To bet
紛らす	まぎらす	To distract; to divert
偽る	いつわる	To lie
不意に	ふいに	Suddenly
鼓動	こどう	Beat; palpitations
明け方	あけがた	Dawn
欠片	かけら	Fragment
旅先	たびさき	Destination
急行	きゅうこう	High speed
踏切	ふみきり	Railroad crossing

Grammar

「君の他に大切なものなど」

Things that are more important than you

Xのほかに

Other than X

アイスクリームのほかにタコも食べたい。

Other than ice cream I also want to eat tacos.

寝るのほかに何もしないつもりです。

I don’t plan on doing anything other than sleeping.

I gave myself a haircut

I got myself a better camera on my phone, after breaking my old one washing it...

It is ridiculous how much it costs for women to get their hair cut. I was yelping around for hair salons a few weeks back, and all the “cheap” salons were like $40 minimum for a haircut (minus the stores in Chinatown). That compounded with the fact that almost every single place got bad reviews made me super anxious about getting my hair cut. When you have short hair (or at least when I have short hair) by the time it hits three months or so, I’m just itching to get it cut. Any longer and it looks like you’re starting to grow a helmet.

So I was thinking, I trust myself a lot, I trust myself to alter my own clothes, why not trust myself to cut my own hair? Plus, if it turned out bad, then at least I didn’t blow $40 and I only had myself to blame. So I decided to jump on Amazon to buy some clippers.

Before cutting my own hair I’ve only really had three other experiences on my CV. Before I came to college I decided to take a pair of scissors and do a straight chop on my bangs, while I was in Japan I briefly did my own side shave (which by any means did not look very good because I was so timid about it), and earlier this summer I cut my brother’s hair (he said it was choppy but he’s picky and no one ended up making fun of him).

I care a fair amount about my hair (like my urge to get it cut when it gets “too long”), but I’m of the camp that hair grows back, in fact it grows back way too quickly which gets me in the bind where I need to cut it every few months or so. Because hair grows back, I decided I could’ve live with myself if it turned out badly, plus the difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut is usually how you decide to own it.

I actually had a camera jerry-rigged, but I ended up taking too long so the batteries died way before I ever finished cutting. The thing about cutting your own hair is that you’ll always cut it way shorter than you planned, because you’re a perfectionist. I went over that fade in the back a bajillion times, and each time it got shorter and shorter and still looked wrong. Thank god I eventually was happy with the result, I would hate to imagine what the back of my head would look like otherwise.

So I’m locked inside this tiny bathroom, and it's 90 out and humid, so naturally I’m sweating all over the place. The tiny hairs that fell off my head would stick to my skin and prick me as I maneuvered my arms behind my head like a clumsy T-Rex. I don’t think my hand-eye coordination has ever been this bad, I was working by looking at a mirror, at a mirror, and I couldn’t tell what orientation was what anymore. Using the scissors was the worst. I ended up nicking the back of my hand once cause I couldn’t tell exactly where the scissors were spacially.

Am I pleased with my haircut? I would say so. And I can only get better and better at cutting my own hair. While we're on the topic of hair I have another story I want to tell.

So over the past year or so I’ve been experimenting with not shampooing my hair, there’s actually an entire neo-hippy movement called “no-poo” which despite its constipation connotations is actually short for “no shampoo.” It ranges from people using apple cider vinegar & baking soda to wash their hair, to people forgoing shampoo entirely and just using water. What people usually end up reporting back is that their hair is healthier and they can go more days without washing without looking like someone dipped them headfirst into a grease tank.

So I how I ended up doing the whole no-poo thing was actually due to pure laziness. Last summer before my internship I was staying at home for two weeks or so, and because I’m never there my shampoo was running dangerously low. I did what any other lazy person would do and just filled it up with some water, shook it up, and continued using the watered down version instead of going downstairs and asking my mom for a new bottle of shampoo. That worked out fine for two weeks and when I got to Tucson I was still rather shampooless, so instead of going out and buying shampoo I decided to forgo it.

Now I didn’t just go “screw it” and not use shampoo, I did do some research, and because my hair was used to using weak shampoo, transitioning to no shampoo wouldn’t cause it to freak out and produce more oil than usual. That summer was pretty amazing for my hair, I remember not having to wash my hair for up to five days and it wouldn’t feel oily, this is coming from someone who used to wash her hair every other day to fend off the grease monster.

Unfortunately this honeymoon stage didn’t last too long, while my hair didn’t feel oily or itchy for the next couple of months, it was starting to develop a waxy texture. And because it was so waxy, dandruff and dust would just stick to my hair and not come out. I bought a very fine tooth comb (some might argue it could be a nitcomb) and tried to comb out all the specks but it never worked, and it was proof that my hair was trapping dust.

This entire time my parents called me every week to beg me to wash my hair with shampoo and I would refuse. I didn’t want to admit that my waxy hair was a disaster and I didn’t want to go back to having to shampoo every other day. Eventually I got sick of my dust trap too and at the beginning of this summer my parents convinced me that I had to do something about it. But rather than go back to the silicon based shampoos that most people are addicted to, I decided to look for other alternatives and eventually settled on a natural silicon & sulfate free shampoo bar.

So I’m now three months on this shampoo bar, and my hair no longer feels waxy, is no longer a dandruff trap, and I can still go up to four days without feeling gross.

Water Works: Light Up Water Piano

The group of highschoolers I mentored

For the past summer I’ve been mentoring a group of teenagers at the South End Technology Center for the Learn2Teach Teach2Learn program. The L2T program is a summer program for youth in Boston (highschoolers) to learn about technology (different fabrication methods, microcontrollers, programming, etc.) and then teach STEM workshops to younger kids all over the greater Boston community. So during the course of this program, in addition to learning and teaching, the youth teachers were put into groups. Each group was expected to complete a project that integrates the different technologies that they learned to solve a problem in their community. The best way to describe this to an Oliner would be like a POE project.

I actually didn’t know going into it that I would end up as an mentor. I had the vaguest understanding of the program, and walking into a room of high school strangers was like reliving the nightmare of being the new kid again. At first I was just awkwardly circling around like when you don’t know where to sit for lunch, then Susan (the program director) pointed at a group and told me to join them, so I did. I helped them out that day, and then one day turned to two, and then every week when I came to the SETC they were always around and eventually this relationship naturally formed.

So what they wanted to do was to bring together the community using music since music is such a big part of who you are when you’re growing up. Their solution was to build a light up musical water piano that could deploy in parks.

If you want to hear them explaining their project go here: https://youtu.be/olgX-EqxAGo

The best picture I could find with all the components featured.

How it worked was the water keys were connected to a Makey Makey, a Makey Makey works such that when an input circuit is completed (ie. you hold ground and touch the water inside the key) it sends a keystroke. The keystroke would then play a note on a keyboard piano pulled up on their computer. We modified source code on the Makey Makey so that in addition to sending a key press it would also write one of the output pins to high. That signal would then be sent into the Arduino which would control a RGB adafruit LED strip. The protoboard connected between the Makey Makey and the Arduino served as a pull down resistor for the signal from the Makey Makey to the Arduino, without it the signal would float around resulting in gibberish being received on the Arduino causing the LEDs to blink in seemingly random patterns.

Trinity lasercutting the cover for the microcontrollers.

So one thing that was really important for me was that they were the ones working on their project, so I tried to be as hands off as possible (generally I only stepped in to debug when even I didn’t know what was going wrong). So they were the ones typing all the code, they were the ones who did all the soldering, they were the ones who designed and laser cut the boxes and I was really impressed, because here were teenagers who learned most of what I asked them to do for the first time this summer, and they were patient, asked questions, and did the work even when it was hard.

Gerard debugging the circuit.

Since I had other responsibilities this summer, I was generally more absent than the other mentors in the program, 2 days a week vs 4-5 days. I usually gave them a list of things they needed to accomplish for the days I wasn’t there, and the thing that would make me feel really proud, was when they would give me a debrief when I came back on what they got done, or send me update emails (keep in mind before you get to college, no one sends emails) telling me what’s up with the project. I was really impressed with how autonomous they were able to be and it really solidified my belief that anyone could do anything as long as they had the right support.

Technically the Arduino was actually unnecessary since the Makey Makey itself is a modified Arduino Leonardo, and has its own output pins, but I really wanted them to have a clean Arduino coding environment without having them work within the existing code uploaded to the Makey Makey.

Satta, Jojo, and Trinity went to the park to take pictures of kids playing with the piano.

I think out of the work I’ve done this summer, this was what I enjoyed the most and found the most rewarding. It was absolutely humbling seeing my group grow over the course of two months. And at the end I knew that they truly owned their own project because when they explained it to people during their project expo they talked about what they had done and not what I had done.

"Where are you really from?"

Typically when I get asked the question “Where are you from?” I tell them Kansas. I think I get some twisted pleasure from the rift between their expectations and my response. But to be perfectly honest, I feel almost as Kansan as most people living in the world do (hint: not very Kansan). I don’t know why Kansas City BBQ is famous, I could care less about the Chiefs or the Jayhawks, pick some random American and they probably know more about Kansas than I do.

Before living in Kansas I lived in New York. Before that I lived in Japan. I felt like a New Yorker just about as much as I feel like a Kansan. I certainly do not feel Japanese. I honestly don’t know how to answer the question “Where are you from?” I have roots everywhere but at the same time nowhere. I think about this alot.

Occasionally I’ll have the person who’ll follow up with “Where are you really from?” This question often finds itself at the top of the list of microaggressions for many Asian-Americans. There are entire videos posted to Youtube where people snap their fingers in a Z-formation as they proclaim that they were born in the whitest city in rural Iowa. Usually people don’t ask “where are you really from?”, they ask things like “where were you born?” or “where are your parents from?” When that happens I feel like they’ve caught me, that I need to unzip my American outer skin and reveal myself as me, me who was born in China. I feel like my generation has been indoctrinated to feel offended when someone asks where they’re really from. My ABC (American Born Chinese) friends can harken to some hospital in America and feel insulted. I don’t know how to feel.

I mean it’s true, I wasn’t born here, so is it stupid that I feel insulted when people ask the question? The whole reason why people get offended in the first place is because deep down that question masks another remark “you’re not American aren’t you?” For people who’ve lived here their entire lives, it's easy to see how that’s offensive. I’m an American too, I’ve had my citizenship for five years, before that I had a green card, before that, my parents visa. I moved here when I was four. My friends are ABC so does that make me a CBA? Is there any difference between their version of being Chinese-American and my version?

I gag when someone asks me where I’m really from for another reason. I’m disgusted by my knee jerk reaction to hide my Chinese origin. Why should I be ashamed of being Chinese? People seem to have no problem inserting the fact that they’re 3th generation Irish, 1/5th Norwegian, and 2% Cherokee into their self introductions. Oh wait, I know why, America has been spewing years and years of anti-China propaganda, and we Americans are racist as fuck. I might not be able to hide the fact that I look Chinese but at least I can hide the fact that I was born there. I wonder if this us vs. them mentality is why so many young people insist on getting all up in arms when they’re asked “where are you really from?”