I know, I apologized too much.

I've been a bit busy this week. At least, it's felt that way. I haven't been home much, and when I have been it's all dealing with my father and his doctor's appointments and stuff. His vision's gotten quite bad, I don't remember if I mentioned this already; he's actually legally blind (his vision being worse than 20/400 in both eyes). So he's officially taking the rest of his short-term disability with full pay from his job (which will last another 12 weeks), then going on long-term disability with half pay (which lasts around 30 weeks). This should bring us up to January 2004. After that he'll be completely on social security disability, and his retirement pension. It's too weird that this stuff is all happening so quickly. I mean, it seems as if everything was fine until a year and a half ago; since then it's been one thing after another. I really don't think he's going to last too much longer; I don't mean like within a few months, but probably not more than 5 years. It's also quite weird to think that, not to mention say it.

But onto other things... earlier in the week I received an email from someone in Japan about Buck-Tick. It was completely in kana and kanji (which makes me glad that gokumew2 sent me that IME download a while ago. ^^ I used the IME to romanize the kanji and then started translating the message as best as I could using an online Japanese <-> English dictonary. (I highly recommend this one.) Well, I sorta got the gist of the email, but couldn't quite understand the specifics.

Subject: お願いします～～

いきばり書き込んでしまいまして、すみません。
実はどうしでも知りたいある曲の歌詞をもしよげれば、ぜひ教えてくれませんか？
One　Life、　One　Deathの「サファイア」っていう曲なんですけど。　もしメールで日本語で送って頂ければ、大変有難いですか。。

本当にお願いします。

B-Tマニアクより

I wanted a more accurate translation, but I couldn't seem to get one, and I was getting impatient to reply. So on Thursday night I decided to reply anyway. This is what I came up with (with a bit of help from Angelica):

Subject: Re: お願いします～～

メールありがとう。

少しだけ日本語をわかります、すみません。
どちらをもとめますか？　歌（ｍｐ３）？　英語のかし？　おくりがなのかし？

ロマジのかしはここです：http://bucktick.koyasunomiko.com/lyrics/olod/08.html

あなたのかんたんな日本語はむずかしいです。
本当にすみません！

ほかのB-Tマニアクをみつけますだからわたしはうれしい～～です！

You'll never believe that after the 30-45 minutes it took to compose this email, when I went to send it, I'd been idle too long and I had to re-login to my email (and so it completely deleted)! But at least Angelica remembered what I'd written so I was able to re-write it in only 2 minutes. ^^ However, I noticed after I sent it, that I'd made a little typo. So I sent another email with the subject: あやまって！ (which means "by mistake"), and corrected my mistake. ^_~

To my surprise, I received another reply Friday morning:

Subject: Re: あやまって！

お返事ありがとうございます。
日本人の方じゃないですか？　でも日本語上手ですね。
外国人までBーTが広まっていることはうれしいです。

Thank U for Replying me

ちなみに、大丈夫ですよ、いいたい意味がわかってたんですから。　でもメールの件名が：　あやまって　は違いますよ。
あやまっては：　Apologize　To　Meって意味だよ。　多分いいたいことはあやまりますだと思う。

これからもがんばってB-Tを応援して下さいね～～

The exchanges are just too awesome beyond words 'cause I'd really love to brush up on vocabulary and grammar with a Japanese penpal, but I don't know if I even have enough knowledge to do that. Now, I haven't yet replied to this email, although I've translated most of it -- it's quite a bit easier to understand than the first email. ^^ My only problem is, I can't figure out if the second-to-last line means that the mistake was in apologizing to her (I'm just assuming it's a her, I don't actually know), because I didn't have to apologize... or does it mean that my mistake was in saying "ayamatte" rather than "ayamarimasu"? Can anyone help out here? Oh, and please, can anyone enlighten me on the usage of "tan" in the phrase "wakatte tan desu kara;" it'd be appreciated!

Hmm... not to mention, I never did get an answer to my question as to what she'd wanted in the first place. Maybe that means she was looking for the lyrics I sent her the link to? (Although I can't quite make sense of that, considering she's Japanese herself -- wouldn't it be easy to access J-rock lyrics if you already know Japanese?)

BTW, I highly recommend staying far away from Altavista's quick-translation program, Babelfish, if possible 'cause it's just horrible. (But what can you expect of a computer translation, right?) However, if you're desperate for some sort of translation and practically anything will do, I'd suggest putting spaces between the kana where you know the words end/begin because it ends up making just a bit more sense than if there are no spaces whatsoever.

Oh, and if anyone's interested in my vague translations of the emails (and/or an accurate translation of my own reply), just drop me a comment; I wasn't sure how many people would actually be interested in that.