hide's All Night Nippon R
1998.4.17
RADIO 1242kHz
AM3:00
Segment 7, pages 93-98
Translated by w_b
Umm, and that's kind of how recording goes, here in Los Angeles.
When I'm recording as 'hide' and with X there's a lot more Japanese people around and often I talk mostly in Japanese.
When I'm doing 'Zilch' there are no Japanese people around, really, so like it or not I have no choice but to speak in English.
I'm not fluent at all so really, when I blow a fuse, it's with a barrage of slang and four letter idioms....
You know in the end I'm convinced that you remember English best when you're pissed off, when you're at your angriest.
And when you have sex.
That doesn't mean I'm getting any over here, but you do hear it said a lot, don't you.
Don't they say that if you really want to learn English, you should try taking a lover?
I really do get that, though.
So I get the most pissed off when I want or would like something, or when I'm hungry, or for example when I'm working on something and want to let people know that nope, no way, it's not working for me.
I retain a lot of sentences when I get like that.
And when I'm pissed I say things like 'don't be an idiot' and 'quit bullshitting' which of course in English ends up as me saying something like, 'don't fuck with me'.
Hmm... Well, so other than that, I don't really do small talk at work.
And yeah, it makes me sad that I'm forced to stick to narrow topics, so I'm doing my best to listen and understand, right.
Because I had a thought that hey, that's the best way for me to get better at saying things.
Except you know, I forget it all the moment I leave this place.
My listening comprehension starts going downhill the moment I get back to Japan.
And so when I finally get back here after a while, my world is once again filled with "what?" and "huh?"
Mm... And that's how it goes.
Nope, I don't study at all. I mean grammar or anything like that.
When other people talk I just somehow get it, I get used to the way they talk, bit by bit, and eventually start to get what they're saying.
But when we first meet I mumble at them. It's all, "Uh, pahdon, pahdon, pahdon, imuh soree, imuh soree."
And then there are emails which make me think that I really should straighten out my grammar.
I get an email online and suddenly.... Talking, I can get my point across pretty quickly but it's embarrassing whenever I have to write, you know.
Cause my grammar's messed up when I write.
So yeah, that's a problem.
Though from time to time I do pull one of my grammar books from middle high.
Hm, so, this funny thing happened.
There's this kid, my personal manager, who recently came here.
It wasn't even his first time but he was acting as if it were.
We went to the supermarket and he goes like, "Man, you gotta love America. It's all fat free."
That is, he thought it meant 'free to gain all the weight you want'.
Then he goes, "So that's why they're so huge here."
And then when a friend of mine came here his first time, we went to Mcdonald's.
He turned to me and went, "C'mon, let's go get a burger."
I was wondering just how he'd ask for it... I mean, the guy knew zero English.
And once there he turns to me and goes, "hide-san, they just asked me something in English!"
It was one of those moments where it hits home that you're the foreigner here, not them. It's pretty interesting.
Books in English, I don't read books in English. I read the newspaper at most, things like that.
I get fed up and tired halfway through.
But I should read, I should.
Really, whenever I come here I read almost nothing aside from Japanese.
Man, I really do read only in Japanese.
Whenever I come here I end up desperate to read some proper Japanese.
Like Mishima (Yukio).... That's all I ever read here.
Uh, but Japanese books, books in Japanese are expensive here.
Japanese books are expensive, and even though weekly magazines do come out early, what I really want to read is books on Japanese culture, or some pure Japanese literature.
Mmm, yeah, a lot of things here make me take note of this incredibly nationalistic side I that have.
Although you know, I felt the exact same way when I was watching soccer.
Ah, and man does it ever grow inside of me, especially when I'm recording with the guys here.
"We can never, ever lose to those guys, we who carry the Japanese flag!" It's something that just bubbles up inside of me.
Maybe that's where courage comes from.
For example, no one in Zilch speaks Japanese but when I'm working on lyrics I start by singing them all in Japanese.
But since the stuff they sing about is rather conceptual, pretty problematic and complex... I have a lot of trouble with it.
I can't get the meaning across, and then granted there's a certain logic to the rhymes but it's hard and therefore I have trouble with my pronunciation, and.... It makes me desperate to teach them the beauty, the cleverness of Japanese when it comes to sound.
I had this thought, that even if I only let them listen to the Japanese used in heavy rock, nothing more, just being able to feel like myself again would be a victory. So that's my excuse for singing in Japanese.
Next, the guy in charge of the English lyrics listens to my Japanese and writes the English.
So that's why the sound doesn't really change from the Japanese to the English version.
Yup. So that's what I want to do the most, teach them about Japanese.
Except, I do of course get that ultimately, if your audience is English speaking, you have no choice but to sing in English.
And yet, I really don't want to obliterate the fact that these things were originally created by a Japanese guy.
Perhaps that's the other side of my not being able to speak English at a native level.
But everything I said about Japanese aside, what I want is to put all of myself into creating something complex and beautiful.
And well, I'm not sure whether this has anything to do with what I've been talking about, but during this one recording session... These guys were around when I was recording with Zilch.
They're a hardcore band I'm friends with, and you'll find them included on the Woofer 1 compilation. They're called Amen and they're pretty cool.
Please give them a listen. Coma America by Amen.