Yamashita Tomohisa: 0409 Vol. 74
0409
Vol. 74 "Love"
This is the season of romantic encounters. Yamapi talks about his many "loves", and explains, in his opinion, the difference between love and romance*.
I love it when the weather is beautiful like it is today. If I had today off, it'd be nice to take the car out to a place filled with nature. I would walk along a mountain path rich with foliage, eat a quick lunch, and go home. That kind of vacation would be great. I've gotta tell you, it was so hard to get up this morning! I like to take trips, but I also love those days when I can sleep in as long as I want. They say you spend one-third of your life in bed. Sleep is important! I wish I had been a little more picky when buying my bed. I didn't really think when I put my room together. By the way, when I sleep on the road, I always use my favorite eye mask that Koyama [Keiichiro] gave me.
Something I'm attached to is the wristwatch my mom bought me when I graduated high school. Then there's the bracelet I bought myself after I graduated college. Those are the two most significant items I've gotten to commemorate events in my life. I don't buy things to reward myself just for working hard. The jeans I wear were good as new when I bought them two or three years ago, but now the knees are worn and have holes in them. I'm also attached to the camouflage jacket I bought in my junior high days. Back then I chose to buy an over-sized jacket, which is why I can still wear it. It's made out of strong material that doesn't wear easily, and even when I get sick of wearing it, I'll soon pull it back out of the closet and wear it again.
Books that I love? My favorite manga series are Dragon Ball and ONE PIECE. I normally read a book only once; I don't go back and read them again. The books I pick up at bookstores are usually related to psychology, philosophy, or business. I also like to read books about the brain. I don't get excited about novels or essays--I prefer to watch fictional stories on the screen, rather than read words on a page. Plus, for me, watching movies is also a learning opportunity. Watching DVDs at home is fine, but I'd rather watch movies at the theater. You'd be surprised, but people don't usually notice me there. I recently watched a movie about a stock broker, but it was a little hard to understand with all the talk about stocks and stuff. The two genres I never watch are romance and horror. I don't care about other people's relationships (laughs), and I don't think I will ever be in a horror movie. Even if Hollywood offered me a role in a horror movie, I wouldn't accept it. Seriously, if you underestimate a ghost, something really bad will happen to you. I've never seen a ghost, but that stuff seriously scares me! I don't want to have anything to do with it!!
Since becoming an adult, I don't think that falling in love is confined to any season, but for students, spring is the time for starting relationships. In grade school, I remember there being a few guys that really worried about how they looked in front of the girls in our class. I was always put into classes with girls that I knew, so I never tried to act cool in front of them. I was a Johnny's Jr. by the time I entered junior high, and girls in the upper grades would come down to my class to see me. I hated being singled out like that in front of my friends. My high school was a special performing arts school, and I was with people like [Ikuta] Toma and other young celebrities. I don't recall having any big hopes or worries then.
Someday when I'm married I might be able to tell the difference between romance and real love, but at this point, I still don't quite understand. They say that real love comes from the heart and romance comes from a place farther south [lol], but I wonder if that's really true. I mean, just because you get married doesn't mean you suddenly have unconditional love for your family. It can also depend on if you have children or not. In any case, I think that for both love and romance to work, both people need to have room in their hearts for each other. If you don't have room to think about the other person, it's almost impossible. It's okay if times are tough in the middle of a relationship, but if you don't have time for each other at the beginning, the relationship won't get off the ground. Of course, this is only what I think. When someone is busy with other things, with their studies or with work, it's hard to make time for love. When students are busy studying for entrance exams, they don't date much, do they? But besides those students studying for exams, teenagers might actually have the most freedom to care for another person.
*Between ai and koi. You can read more about the difference between these two words here.
[Seventeen, May 2011 / translation by amapi - Please credit if using/quoting]
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Got the scan from watchful21! I think Yamapi fans will find this one really interesting. Is this a thinly veiled statement that he's not interested in relationships because he's too busy? Hm...
This one was a little difficult to translate because the terms don't match up to the English vocabulary, but I did my best! Let me know what you like or don't like about my translations so I can do better next time~!
Also, in a week or so I will be moving this post behind Vol. 25 to keep the issues in order. It won't be gone, just in a different place!
Thanks for reading!
-Amanda