Sunday 11 July 2004

Pic of the day: Stop! Angel to the rescue. Screenshot from anime Pita Ten, featuring the trainee angel Misha.

Shinai nai nai!

Don't get the wrong impression (as if you won't anyway). Although I am surprised myself by how much these now useless instincts stick in my brain, I actually have other hobbies too. Yeah. But anyway, neighboring wives revisited. (Actually I don't even know them all good enough to say that they are wives, but they ought to be, the way they look. Yeah. But that's beside the point, really. Women must be assumed to be wives until there is evidence to the contrary.)

So I was out taking a walk, and had fortunately taken with me my minidisk player and my new headphones that don't hurt my ears. (They also have 5 meter of cord, but I have a belt so it is not a big deal.) The disk was one with some of my favorite anime songs of the last few months. One of them is the opening song from Pita Ten ... you remember that anime about the neighbor girl who is an angel? That one. Very lively songs, I have both the beginning and end songs on that disk. After today's event, I ordered the original CD from CDJapan.co.jp.

So I was happily walking along when (another) neighborhood wife came into sight. And what a sight. I have worked out the expression "visually available" to describe the impression. You should probably not dwell upon this, and I certainly shouldn't, so let's move on already. Which I did. It's just that ... well, my godlikeness is kinda lacking a lot these days, and so a rather big percentage of my soul wanted to look and look at her. Wanted to turn around. That's not good. A man should not want strongly to look at wives (except his own, of course). Only bad things can come from it, as history clearly shows. Besides, for me, even thinking of such things is really 20 years overdue; but hey, you try 28 years of No Hot Hot Loving and tell me how it feels. I'm waiting right here.

This is where angels come in helpful. Even anime angels. Sometimes you have to wonder where one angel leaves and the other comes in. Because as I played my minidisk, the song cheerfully went: "Shinai nai nai! Shinai nai nai!" which means, to the best of my Otaku Japanese knowledge: "Don't do it! Don't! Don't!" (Somewhat depending on context ... my fansub translation of the lyrics says "I won't do it! I won't! I won't!" which is pretty good too.) Also, by one of those cosmic coincidences, it sounds very much like the the Norwegian expression "si nei nei nei", meaning "say no, no, no!" which is also eerily relevant, don't you think? Considering that Norwegian and Japanese separated in the deep of the Ice Age, somewhere between 40 000 and 100 000 years ago, I'd say it is pretty nice work.

So, well, I walked on, enjoying the angelic music. I am definitely buying the CD, I am. I felt strangely warm, for such a grey summer day.

The price of not becoming a creepy old peeping tom is eternal vigilance, it seems. The price for the Pita Ten soundtrack CD, however, is 2857 yen plus shipping. You can also buy the full length Wake Up Angel single with karaoke version and bonus track for only 1143 yen plus shipping.