Ulfuls Lyrics
This page is the original reason for the existence of this site.
It contains the fruits of my considerable labours in
the romanising of
Ulfuls lyrics. I can't offer any explanation for my choice of songs
other than that they were the ones I felt inspired to do when I had
the time free to do a song. I haven't done any new ones for quite a while.
The Ulfuls lyrics:
One main important
caveat for you. I don't speak much Japanese. Obviously I know
more Japanese than the
average Australian but I've never been formally taught.
Learning Ulfuls songs, and hence having to romanise them, was originally
just one of the many half-arsed methods I devised to learn Japanese by any means
other than the actual study required.
I have
a weird vocabulary and know sod-all grammar. The way I
space my
romanisations will give the game away to anyone who can actually
speak Japanese.
I've used a hierarchy of authorities.
- 1)The lyric sheets that come with the original CDs
- 2)The lyric sheets that come with the collection CDs
- 3)Ulfuls Guitar Song Book
- 4)What it sounds like to Ishii Hideki and various other Japanese friends
- 5)What it sounds like to me (or looks like if I'm trying to lipread off a DVD!)
- 6)Japanese karaoke machines
I've also occasionally used my own judgement in a
questionable fashion and although I usually try to be consistent in the way I romanise I
don't always manage to be. Shanai na.
Square brackets reflect brackets on the original lyric sheets. Round brackets
show when I've inserted material not to be found in any of the first three
authorities. Note that anything in round brackets may be wrong. Wronger
than the rest of it, that is.
Italics reflect romaji on the lyric sheets.
Where they have published English words in katakana I've transcribed them
phonetically rather than changing them to English, on almost all occasions.
This has some odd results, particularly with the word 'good'! I'm really not
sure how to go about transcribing that little katakana 'tsu' that seems to do the job
of a glottal stop.
And a few thanks.
- Tortoise Matsumoto (Thankyou for the music, Kame-sama!) and
Ulful Keisuke,
Sankon Jr. and John B Chopper,the other
Ulfuls members. Also all of the brilliant
support musicians, especially Ito Mikio.
- Nightow Yasuhiro, for pointing me towards Ulfuls by basing Nicholas D
Wolfwood, in his excellent Trigun manga, on Tortoise.
- Sumire-chan, whose website 'Make a Little Lightbulb in Your Soul', dealing
with things Trigunnish, first showed me the connection between Trigun and
Ulfuls.
- Martin, my friend the Master of the Internet,
for finding those magical MP3s and then helping me hunt down the CDs and
DVDs.
- Bean and Medge, who went Christmas shopping in Kyoto to get me more CDs,
and especially Medge for helping me to set up this site.
- My son Peter for his help with romanising Shakkin Daiou.
- My son Jimi whose enthusiasm for Ulfuls music almost matches my
own. Big thanks to Jimi also the scanning. The earlier
pictures up on various parts of this site are the result of his
hard work.
- Ishii Hideki, for the gift of the Guitar
Song Book and his help with the lyrics that didn't get written down.
- Tommy Tsukiyama for his help with Zen Nihon Mukashibanashi
Senshuken, for joining me up to the fan club, for getting me
tickets to the 'Ee nen' tour, for sending me a video copy of
Yassa 2003, for obtaining my ticket for Yassa 2004 and for showing me around
Nagoya. Tsukiyama Tomohiro is one can-do dude.
- Haga Hiroshi, Kenneth Burgoyne, Ohashi-san and Mizusawa-san for
their help in getting to Yassa 2003 and Yoko James for her help
obtaining tickets for the 'Ee nen' tour.
- Takushima Hirotaka, Yamada Daichi and Michael Owen, who all sent
me video copies of Yassa 2003 as well. There are some lovely people
in the world!
- The unnamed and unlinked-to folks out there who provided me with my
first romanised Ulfuls lyrics. They're pretty old sites though so there's not a lot of point in
linking to them at this stage.
Back to Ulfuls