Oh My Arashi! Chapter 1 translation
FINALLY getting around to posting this on my journal. >_> I swear I'm still translating this. Anyway.
"Oh My Arashi!" is a collection of stories from Arashi's staff. There are sob-stories, funny stories, and just ridiculous stories. Scans of the book are from the wonderful tokyolovers here. (They have cute little pictures. Go look at them.)
Chapter 1
Leader disappears at Odaiba!?
~ Arashi’s Major Panic at “Odaiba Dot Com/Sudden Crowd at Odaiba!”[1] ~
This summer, even though they were on a break, Arashi was chosen to be the image characters at Fuji Television’s event “Odaiba Dot Com.” They also did a commercial or Bourbon’s “Puchi” featuring their song “Typhoon Generation,” and special lives were announced for July 20th and August 8th. On top of that, that summer, Arashi was running all over in the hottest place in Japan.
So, in contrast to the flashy and flamboyant front of the stage, the truth backstage was...
“What do we do; he wouldn't just skip out on us!"
“No way. I mean, it’s Leader.”
“No, I dunno… because Ohno-kun isn’t good when it’s hot like this…”
... the discussion of four people with worried faces, though what about, no one else seemed to know.
What in the world had happened? Let’s take the story back to the day of the performance…
Ohno-kun goes AWOL!?
August 8th, 2000 AD
That day, the location of Fuji Television’s Summer Event “Odaiba Dot Com” in Odaiba, Tokyo was enveloped in a freak heat wave. And even with that heat, even at a glance, on top of the guests that were invited to Fuji TV’s specially constructed 7-story stage for the “Arashi Live Performance”, there were tens and hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world… though maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. (haha.)
Well, other than that, after the second performance on July 20th, everyone in Arashi was saying,
“Anyone wanna get takoyaki[2] after this?”
“I wanna go see some of the fun event booths…!” and they all went right into a very relaxed mood. So then, by contrast, afterwards…
“Huh!? Where’d Ohno-kun go?”
And so the first alarms were sounded. Yes, while they were all relaxing, he had taken off on his own on a whim.
“I’m gonna… go to the bathroom and for a walk.”
“Cool, see you when you get back.”
When he’d left the dressing room, he had definitely said “a walk.” But all the other four had gotten from what he’d said was “bathroom.”
“Ah…! This feels great…”
Ohno-kun had opened the emergency exit and was sitting in the emergency staircase by the service entrance, thinking, “Wow, the sea’s really close, here…” as he felt the scent of the water that the wind carried.
Really, though, he’d gotten to this point because at the previous event he’d noticed…
“Eh~? Hey, there’s stairs over here. Next time, I’ll have to come here and chill out for a bit…” and so it became the secret spot that Ohno-kun was looking to get to.
“We’re at an event that’s so close to the ocean; it’d be a waste to just be cooped up in the dressing room the whole time.”
The unexpectedly enthusiastic Ohno-kun, even now at concert locations and TV studios, would go…
“This is my Chill Point!” at whatever spot he found interesting, and would space out by himself for a while.
“It’s fun to be with everyone, but being so busy all the time, you have to make time for yourself. If I don’t have time to just sit and think about stuff by myself, I get really worn down.”
After almost two years of a life of live performances in Tokyo, Ohno-kun realized this important fact of life. And that was his “Enjoy my down time!” time.
“Nice weather and the smell of the bay… Well, it’s Tokyo Bay so there’s some other smells mixed in there too, but… It feels so good, spacing out enough that I can hardly remember I have a performance after this…”
H-huh?
“It’s nice to chill… out…”
Hey, wait a sec--!
“zzz… zzz…”
Our silly Ohno-kun fell asleep!
Leader’s gone!!
~About then, in the dressing room~
“Oh hey, where’s Ohno-kun?”
“Didn’t he go to the bathroom?”
“Yeah, but that was like 20 or 30 minutes ago; are you sure he went to the bathroom?” and thus, the disappearance of the leader began to cause a small commotion.
“This is kinda bad. We’re on stand-by in 10 minutes.”
“NO WAY! Where the heck did he go…??”
With the imminent approach of the start of the performance, and no idea where the whereabouts of the indispensable Ohno-kun unknown, Aiba-kun and Matsumoto-kun began to panic.
“For now, I’ll go check the bathroom!” said Ninomiya-kun as he rushed off to said bathroom.
“Just calm down… It’s not like Ohno-kun’s a little kid or anything,” said Sakurai-kun, trying to sound calm and collected, while his thought were definitely as scattered as the others.
“Alright, get ready to be on stand-by, please~!” someone on the event staff called. Ninomiya-kun returned to the room, instead.
“He wasn’t there! I coudn’t stay and look like I thought, though.”
“Wh-wh-wh-wh-what do we do?’
“Do it with just the four of us?”
“No way that’d work. He was here for all the others.”
“The police!”
“Huh?”
"Let's call the police! There's a Coast Guard station around here, right?"
A bad 'brilliant plan' from the flustered Aiba-kun. The Coast Guard’s not going to do a huge investigation, you know!!
“Anyway, we’ll just have to go on stage. Then, we’ll just wait for Ohno-kun to get there!”
“Y-yeah.”
So, Sakurai-kun’s idea was agreed upon by the four. Even if they didn’t manage to find Ohno-kun, they wouldn’t have to disappoint the many fans that had come.
“Okay!”
The four nodded in agreement, and together they made their way to the event’s stage.
“Hey, you! Hey!”
“… zzz… huh…?”
“You can’t sleep here, you know.”
“Sleep… AH!!”
A security guard in the middle of a patrol found and decided to warn Ohno-kun.
“I-I-I’m so sorry!”
“Where are you from?”
“Arashi!”
“’A-ra-shi?’ What company was that again, now?”
The security guard in his 50s could never have guessed that the young man he’d found sleeping on the stairs was a super-idol.
“Umm… Ack! Right, the live!!”
Ohno-kun came back to the rest of us. He found us precisely three minutes before the performance started, and…
“Huh? Hey, isn’t your shirt a little wet right there?”
“Y-you’re imagining it.”
… right on his chest was a wet spot from where he’d drooled on his shirt!
Notes:
[1] The event's name in Japanese is "Odaiba dotto komu" which is a pun combining "dot com" and the phrase "a sudden crowd," which are pronounced the same.
[2] fried octopus
"Oh My Arashi!" is a collection of stories from Arashi's staff. There are sob-stories, funny stories, and just ridiculous stories. Scans of the book are from the wonderful tokyolovers here. (They have cute little pictures. Go look at them.)
Chapter 1
Leader disappears at Odaiba!?
~ Arashi’s Major Panic at “Odaiba Dot Com/Sudden Crowd at Odaiba!”[1] ~
This summer, even though they were on a break, Arashi was chosen to be the image characters at Fuji Television’s event “Odaiba Dot Com.” They also did a commercial or Bourbon’s “Puchi” featuring their song “Typhoon Generation,” and special lives were announced for July 20th and August 8th. On top of that, that summer, Arashi was running all over in the hottest place in Japan.
So, in contrast to the flashy and flamboyant front of the stage, the truth backstage was...
“What do we do; he wouldn't just skip out on us!"
“No way. I mean, it’s Leader.”
“No, I dunno… because Ohno-kun isn’t good when it’s hot like this…”
... the discussion of four people with worried faces, though what about, no one else seemed to know.
What in the world had happened? Let’s take the story back to the day of the performance…
Ohno-kun goes AWOL!?
August 8th, 2000 AD
That day, the location of Fuji Television’s Summer Event “Odaiba Dot Com” in Odaiba, Tokyo was enveloped in a freak heat wave. And even with that heat, even at a glance, on top of the guests that were invited to Fuji TV’s specially constructed 7-story stage for the “Arashi Live Performance”, there were tens and hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world… though maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. (haha.)
Well, other than that, after the second performance on July 20th, everyone in Arashi was saying,
“Anyone wanna get takoyaki[2] after this?”
“I wanna go see some of the fun event booths…!” and they all went right into a very relaxed mood. So then, by contrast, afterwards…
“Huh!? Where’d Ohno-kun go?”
And so the first alarms were sounded. Yes, while they were all relaxing, he had taken off on his own on a whim.
“I’m gonna… go to the bathroom and for a walk.”
“Cool, see you when you get back.”
When he’d left the dressing room, he had definitely said “a walk.” But all the other four had gotten from what he’d said was “bathroom.”
“Ah…! This feels great…”
Ohno-kun had opened the emergency exit and was sitting in the emergency staircase by the service entrance, thinking, “Wow, the sea’s really close, here…” as he felt the scent of the water that the wind carried.
Really, though, he’d gotten to this point because at the previous event he’d noticed…
“Eh~? Hey, there’s stairs over here. Next time, I’ll have to come here and chill out for a bit…” and so it became the secret spot that Ohno-kun was looking to get to.
“We’re at an event that’s so close to the ocean; it’d be a waste to just be cooped up in the dressing room the whole time.”
The unexpectedly enthusiastic Ohno-kun, even now at concert locations and TV studios, would go…
“This is my Chill Point!” at whatever spot he found interesting, and would space out by himself for a while.
“It’s fun to be with everyone, but being so busy all the time, you have to make time for yourself. If I don’t have time to just sit and think about stuff by myself, I get really worn down.”
After almost two years of a life of live performances in Tokyo, Ohno-kun realized this important fact of life. And that was his “Enjoy my down time!” time.
“Nice weather and the smell of the bay… Well, it’s Tokyo Bay so there’s some other smells mixed in there too, but… It feels so good, spacing out enough that I can hardly remember I have a performance after this…”
H-huh?
“It’s nice to chill… out…”
Hey, wait a sec--!
“zzz… zzz…”
Our silly Ohno-kun fell asleep!
Leader’s gone!!
~About then, in the dressing room~
“Oh hey, where’s Ohno-kun?”
“Didn’t he go to the bathroom?”
“Yeah, but that was like 20 or 30 minutes ago; are you sure he went to the bathroom?” and thus, the disappearance of the leader began to cause a small commotion.
“This is kinda bad. We’re on stand-by in 10 minutes.”
“NO WAY! Where the heck did he go…??”
With the imminent approach of the start of the performance, and no idea where the whereabouts of the indispensable Ohno-kun unknown, Aiba-kun and Matsumoto-kun began to panic.
“For now, I’ll go check the bathroom!” said Ninomiya-kun as he rushed off to said bathroom.
“Just calm down… It’s not like Ohno-kun’s a little kid or anything,” said Sakurai-kun, trying to sound calm and collected, while his thought were definitely as scattered as the others.
“Alright, get ready to be on stand-by, please~!” someone on the event staff called. Ninomiya-kun returned to the room, instead.
“He wasn’t there! I coudn’t stay and look like I thought, though.”
“Wh-wh-wh-wh-what do we do?’
“Do it with just the four of us?”
“No way that’d work. He was here for all the others.”
“The police!”
“Huh?”
"Let's call the police! There's a Coast Guard station around here, right?"
A bad 'brilliant plan' from the flustered Aiba-kun. The Coast Guard’s not going to do a huge investigation, you know!!
“Anyway, we’ll just have to go on stage. Then, we’ll just wait for Ohno-kun to get there!”
“Y-yeah.”
So, Sakurai-kun’s idea was agreed upon by the four. Even if they didn’t manage to find Ohno-kun, they wouldn’t have to disappoint the many fans that had come.
“Okay!”
The four nodded in agreement, and together they made their way to the event’s stage.
“Hey, you! Hey!”
“… zzz… huh…?”
“You can’t sleep here, you know.”
“Sleep… AH!!”
A security guard in the middle of a patrol found and decided to warn Ohno-kun.
“I-I-I’m so sorry!”
“Where are you from?”
“Arashi!”
“’A-ra-shi?’ What company was that again, now?”
The security guard in his 50s could never have guessed that the young man he’d found sleeping on the stairs was a super-idol.
“Umm… Ack! Right, the live!!”
Ohno-kun came back to the rest of us. He found us precisely three minutes before the performance started, and…
“Huh? Hey, isn’t your shirt a little wet right there?”
“Y-you’re imagining it.”
… right on his chest was a wet spot from where he’d drooled on his shirt!
Notes:
[1] The event's name in Japanese is "Odaiba dotto komu" which is a pun combining "dot com" and the phrase "a sudden crowd," which are pronounced the same.
[2] fried octopus