Takeda met the band members in August 2003 as a member of a different band performing in the Yokohama High School Music Festival. An audition was not held for new members, instead, acquaintances to the band members, drummer Satoshi Yamaguchi and bassist Yusuke Takeda, were added to the group without the members even having their skills trialled. Radwimps returned from hiatus in March 2004, however members Kei Asō, Yūsuke Saiki and Akio Shibafumi did not decide to resume band activities.
The following August, after a guest appearance at the Yokohama High School Music Festival, the band went on hiatus for Noda and other members to focus on their school exams. The band released their debut album Radwimps in July through independent label Newtraxx, featuring songs written by the band in middle school. Following this single, the band toured the Yokohama area, including a performance as the sole act at Yokohama's Club 24West. In September and August 2002, the band partook in the Yokohama High School Music Festival, and eventually won the grand prize for the competition with the song "Moshi mo." "Moshi mo" was released as the band's debut single in May 2003, with 10,000 copies pressed and sold for 100 yen each. At this point, guitarist Akira Kuwahara dropped out of high school in order to focus on the band. The band's activities began centred on Yokohama, with the band performing their first live at live house BB Street in Yokohama's Kannai district on February 5, 2002. He was asked to become the vocalist by a friend, and originally band activities were balanced with basketball. Lead vocalist Yojiro Noda first became interested in music after hearing Oasis in middle school, when he would try to remember the guitar chords and sing to Oasis songs. The five original members had been friends since middle school. Radwimps first formed in 2001 in Kanagawa, Japan during their first year of high school. They have also gained recognition for providing the soundtrack to Your Name, one of the highest-grossing Japanese animated films, as well as the soundtrack to 2019's Weathering With You. The band achieved great commercial success in 2006 with their album Radwimps 4: Okazu no Gohan and are best known for their later singles " Order Made" (2008) and " Dada" (2011), both of which hit number one on Oricon's single charts. The band's name, Radwimps, was formed from two English language slang terms, " rad" and " wimp." According to the band, the coined word had several meanings, including "excellent weakling" and "superlative coward." Of those two definitions, “keeps me up” only strictly matches the first, but it also has the connotation of “keeping me up at night” and being something of a sticking point for the speaker.Radwimps ( ラッドウインプス, Raddo'uinpusu, stylized as RADWIMPS) is a Japanese rock band, who debuted independently in 2003 and later on major label Toshiba EMI in 2005. The Japanese uses 支えている for the verb which usually means “to support or hold up” but can also mean “to hold (someone) back”.
I don’t particularly like any of the translations here but I thought mixing it up would be slightly less jarring :DģThis is also wordplay - the first chorus uses 見ようとして ( miyou to shite, “trying to see”) while this one uses 見落として ( miotoshite “failing to see”).ĤSelfishly introducing my own wordplay here. Same thing in the last verse - there’s a sense of “going back to the start” and trying to start again.ĢThis line uses the same vocabulary in the 3 different bridges (君の震える手を握る) but the conjugation/context is different. 踏切 can mean both “railroad crossing” and “starting line”. To try to understand what couldn’t be knownĮven if you don’t show up two minutes after meġThe word 踏切 is written as フミキリ here indicating it’s a play on words.
So shall we start our astronomical observation Not to be swallowed up by that deep darkness Shall we start our astronomical observation
Bump of Chicken lyrics - Astronomical Observationīack in the saddle in translating songs with slightly complex lyrics! Or translating at all! I rediscovered this song when I was reading some emails from 2015 (in this pandemic year of our lord 2020) and it was randomly linked as an attachment to one of them.