Okay, this is for the people who I will have forced into reading my fic who are not Japanophiles like all normal people. I mean gawsh, you must obsess over other things. Anyway, as a general rule, as this fic was supposed to be an absolute translation, I have tried to stay away from adding random bits of Japanese lingo as I feel it defeats the point of writing something in English. However, there are some words that we don't really have equivalents for in English, which were important to the general Japanese atmosphere. It's only on a very low level, but I thought I'd put this here just so everyone is more or less in the know. Enjoy this cultural mini injection.
[Name]-chan - Chan is a suffix a bit like the English 'Miss' used for young girls or at times young children generally. It also has quite cute or affectionate connotations and is often used as part of a nickname.
Echi - Prepare yourself for this definition, it�s a complicated one. Echi is the Japanese pronunciation of the letter 'H'. H stands for the Japanese word Hentai. Hentai means pervert[ed]. If something is labelled Hentai, it means it is risqu� to say the least. It can refer to anything from sexy implications to porno.
Danna - The term Danna relates back to the tradition of geisha. A Danna is really a sort of patron, who would pay a geisha a wage for exclusive rights to entertainment from said geisha, often taking them as a mistress. These were often as close as many geisha would get to a husband. Note - a geisha is an entertainer, a girl or woman trained in the arts of dance, music and socialising.
Kawaii - Used by Japanophiles the world over, kawaii is the Japanese for cute ^__^
Kabuki - Kabuki is a form of Japanese theatre in which traditionally all roles, even those of women are played by men. Originally women were employed, but trouble with prostitution rings occurred. Instead young men were brought in for the roles of women, but again, trouble with prostitution arose. As a result, for some time Kabuki was forced to use only middle-aged male actors. Although times have changed, traditionally women were not allowed to act in Kabuki, and actors specialist in playing female roles, known as known as Onnagata, are still revered today. The club in this fic, Not Kabuki refers back to the tradition of exclusively middle-aged men, the club being the opposite with its employment of only young women as its source of entertainment.
[Name]-kun - This is similar to chan but applies only to young boys. Again this is informal and affectionate.
Sake - (Sa-keh) is Japanese traditional rice spirit alcohol.
[Name]-sama - Sama is a very polite term that implies respect or at least very good social status. Generally it is reserved for very formal situations.
[Name]-san - This is a suffix that implies some sort of status, for example Mr or Mrs. It is gender neutral and a more formal way of address than chan or kun.
Kimono - The kimono is traditional Japanese clothing, a sort of wrap-around robe tied at the waist with a thick strip of fabric called an obi. They are gender neutral, although there are differences between men and women's kimono.
Yaoi - This is an acronym (ooh!) It comes from "yama-nashi, ochi-nashi, imi-nashi", which can be literally translated into "no climax, no resolution, no meaning". How this translates into the real meaning of Yaoi, which is a male/male romantic/sexual relationship is beyond me. However, Yaoi is now a standard fan-fictioning term. Don't you feel knowledgable?
Written - Japanese is written in three scripts. These are used all together and frequently interchanged, even within a sentence or even within one word. Can I get a woop woop for the crazy writing system? Japanese is also rife with homonyms, which makes written word play something of an art, as you can given a word a contextual/heard meaning and a written one. Ooooh! There isn't a lot of talk of the written system in the fic, but when it is mentioned, what is said probably won't make sense unless you read this.
Hiragana is the Japanese phonetic, which works very similarly to Roman phonetic, except that every character will always have a vowel sound attached, e.g. a, na, mo, u, shi. Except for n. Go figure. It is used mainly for writing Japanese words, although this is not a rule. It's appearance is based on Chinese characters, but has been adapted and simplified over many many years so that now it bears no resemblance to the originals what so ever. Useless information for all!
Katakana is yet another phonetic system. It covers the same range of sounds as Hiragana, but it used mainly for foreign words where they have been adapted into Japanese, e.g. Naifu - knife, and to use a word you will have learn through your diligent reading of this section, Echi - 'H'
Kanji (literally Chinese script) are large complex characters lifted directly from Chinese. They look exactly the same as the original Chinese characters, but they are said differently and most of them have completely different meanings (for instance the character 'Ya� 'in Chinese means to want, but the same character in Japanese is said 'Yume' and means to dream. But then the shared written character for love is 'A�' in Chinese and 'Ai' in Japanese. THERE WILL BE NO LOGIC!!!) Each character has a whole word and meaning assigned to it. A lot of proper nouns, especially people's names use Kanji, as it is a way to assign a definite meaning to a word, especially as Japanese is so full of homonyms.
Pronounciation - When Japanese is written in roman script (as is English and all Latin based languages) - known as Romanji (literally roman script), it has its own set of pronunciation rules. You don't see a lot of it here, so I'm just telling you what you need to know, mainly for the purpose of names.
'a' - like the 'a' in cat
'e' - like the 'e' in met
'i' - like the 'ee' in street
'o' - like the 'o' in not
'u' - like the 'oo' in fool
'ai' - like eye
'ei' - like the 'ay' in may
'ou' - like the 'o' in not
'ae' - like the combined sounds 'a' in cat and 'e' in met
'ao' - like the 'ow' in cow
Consonant sounds are exactly the same as they are said normally in the English language. Any repeated vowels e.g. 'Tooru' should be said 'to-o-ru', as an elongation, rather than the combined and different sound, e.g. the 'oo' in 'fool' that is commonly found in the English language. Having said all of that, the name of the character Die is said as you would say it in English, and should really be written �Dai�. He just spells it that way in really life, the fool that he is.
I think that�s more or less it, and if there's anything else, just ask me or something like that. Now that you're sufficiently educated, I wish you happy crippled pronouncings, and the best of luck. *salutes*