[hide]away

Dedicated to hide, X, Diru and my many other important idols in my life. I try to post translations and summaries relating to hide and X. I'm not Japanese or fluent, so please correct me if you feel something is amiss. Feel free to ask me anything...

[bunnychuu45]

First of all, thank you for all the hard work you put into your translations. I enjoy watching Psyence a Go Go more with your translation beside me! My question: do you know if the complete original hide site is still in existence anywhere? I've found bits of his journal on Wayback, but I thought you might know if there's more.

Thank you💖

His old site domain is down because the domain itself had shut down. It was an old msn website builder. You can enter his old ohp link though into wayback machine: http://live.co.jp/hide/

Hope that helps

[bunnychuu45]

Hi, I'm sorry to disturb you, but I was wondering if there was any chance to get access to the translations that were on xjapantranslations? Thank you!

Well the site is gone, so I suppose not. You could try asking facebook groups? They may have them.

[bunnychuu45]

Hi, this might be an impossible question but I thought if anyone would have an answer you would. I'm planning on visiting hide's grave soon, and I'd like to bring flowers if I can. Do you have any idea of a particular flower that would suit hide specifically? Thank you!!

If you get off at Miurakaigan Station and walk a bit around the corner there's a bunch of flower shops that sell premade bouquets for hide's grave. They usually consist of blue, red or rainbow roses, any pink, red, blue or yellow flowers, or sunflowers.

hide has said before that he likes roses and fan just get colors that match his image.

[bunnychuu45]

Bunny, I found your work at your old site xjapantranslations and could not have been more excited! Thank you for your time and hard work! I have a large personal collection of hide material I want to have translated, and I am finding more and more non-Japanese speaking fans who are in the same boat. I'm considering building a community of fans interested in crowd funding expert Japanese subtitling and translation. What is your gut reaction to that idea?

I wish people would have paid me for my translations lol

It's fine isn't it? Make sure the translator knows that it's copywrited and you are not the owner and used for entertainment purposes only.

[bunnychuu45]

Goodbye X Japan Translations

Some of you may have noticed that the site is down. As I said before I no longer have the funds to upkeep the site. Therefore, the site has been shut down. I honestly appreciate the few people who did donate to the site. Because of those couple of donations I felt for them and paid the majority of this year’s subscription. However, as of yesterday the subscription has ended and I have no funds to renew for another year. Also, seeing as I do not translate anymore.. well .. ya. I had thought about handing the site over to someone, but in the end, I didn’t want to hand over the site to someone and potentially go in a direction that I hadn’t hoped. Also, not only my translations were up there, Juria’s and Sakura Hayashi’s were there as well and I lost contact with both, and honestly if I was either of them and they gave my translations to someone else, I would probably be upset.

I don’t think this is the end for the site per say, I can just no longer pay for it at the moment. I just don’t see a point to keep paying for a site that no longer gets updated? If you guys want to access previous posts, there is always internet archives.

Anyway, thank you for all the support these years! I hope you all continue to support X and hide.

[bunnychuu45]

How would you rank all of x japan's albums? I'm a beginner fan and I'm not sure where to start

Welcome to the fandom! Me personally??Everyone is different but…I love Otome games so if I had to relate:Prologue = Blue Blood①Main Story = Jealousy② → Art of Life③*Choose your ending*Romantic End = Dahlia④Dramatic End = Vanishing Vision④Secret End = ?⑤①Blue Blood was their big hit album. Most of X's iconic songs are on here. Makes sense to listen to it first. ②Jealousy really started their experimentation with classical elements.③Art of Life is just a masterpiece and though it's a one song album, all that album needs is one song. Forget the radio edit. It doesn't measure up to the real thing.④Vanishing Vision is the first and Dahlia the last album they made. I think it really depends what kind of music you like here. Dahlia is more well liked by fans and is the romantic, ballad packed album. I personally prefer Vanishing Vision because of the dramatic 80s thrash metal sound.⑤A 20+ year album in the making. Without fail, the album will certainly be announced to be released "SOON like next year, we are just making the final touches" at least once a year. It has been 90% done for the past 5 years yet doesn't get released. Maybe it will be uncovered someday or never.

[bunnychuu45]

do you happen to know of any sites to buy the rest of x japan’s albums? out of all their older albums currently only blue blood is available on itunes and it’s so annoying. thanks in advance!

Did you try amazon, ebay or CD Japan?

[bunnychuu45]

Stealing from hide’s Grave

The recent news on twitter is that someone posing as hide’s parents’ representative have been taking things from hide’s grave... it got so bad that hide’s mother has written a letter and posted it recently at his grave asking people to NOT take things citing her sadness and regret at things being taken. 

This is the scenario: Two fans went to pray at hide’s grave very recently.  They noticed some person (Japanese) taking things from the grave.  They claimed to be representatives of hide’s parents and said they were clearing out things from the grave.  They said while that happened, the person looked at fan letters written by foreign fans looking disgusted saying, “gross”.  They thought it was strange but didn’t say anything.  Later they came again and found a letter from hide’s mother pleading with the person to not take things from hide’s grave after multiple incidents.  Perhaps it is one person or others as well.

If you see someone taking things from hide’s grave when you visit, please stop them or report them.  If YOU have taken anything from hide’s grave please stop.  I contacted the person who spoke to “hide’s parents’ representatives” and took pictures of the letter at the site.  I’m asking for permission to use and translate the letter as well as their twitter, so I am waiting on that but I just want to vent for now...

What is wrong with you people?  Haven’t the Matsumoto family suffered ENOUGH without people vandalizing hide’s grave.  First its pouring things on the stone and discoloring it, THEN it’s scratching his grave, NOW it’s taking things from his grave INCLUDING THINGS HIDE’S OWN FAMILY PUT AT THE GRAVE.  Imagine your son dies, and you are NICE ENOUGH to make his grave public to fans, even going so far as to show up and greet fans during his memorial, and nice enough to decorate the grave for the enjoyment of his fans, NICE ENOUGH TO offer water, cards and goods for them.  NICE ENOUGH to not shut down the grave after the first couple of incidents of vandalism.  Also, hide’s mother wrote the letter herself after MULTIPLE INCIDENTS of things being stolen from his grave.  Maybe you think you are a fan, but fans wouldn’t make other fans or hide’s family sad.  People who put things at the site put their feelings and thoughts into their offerings.  Even if we are foreign that doesn’t mean that we are less fans than Japanese fans.  Please reflect on what you are doing and stop.

[bunnychuu45]

Could you talk about the X Japan drama? I haven't heard anything of it (sorry if it is asking too much).

I don't understand exactly what is happening myself because there is a lot of false information and rumors going on in the tabloids. If anyone knows something for certain please let me know. I guess it started with Lunatic Fest. Everyone really thought X Japan would play but only Yoshiki came. And then there was no appearance by Toshi at all. Yoshiki shared a picture of he, Pata, Heath and Sugizo and said they were recording. Toshi wasn't present so people were wondering where he was. Then Yoshiki put up a photo on twitter about their new song 'Red Swan' for the opening of Attack on Titans and the picture was titled "X Japan featuring Hyde". Of course this means that Toshi isn't exactly necessary but it was revealed he wasn't on the song AT ALL which pissed off fans because wihout Toshi it isn't X Japan. Everyone was writing angry tweets so Yoshiki changed it to "Yoshiki featuring Hyde" but the damage was done. The news started saying Toshi and Yoshiki are having another falling out. Here's where I'm confused and worried…I didn't see Toshi's NicoNico channel myself but apparently he said that Yoshiki didn't contact him about the new song but he is the leader and decides everything about X and he has been busy doing Variety Shows. He was asked "why did Yoshiki do that" and Toshi just said "I don't know. He decides everything about X. We aren't fighting". Apparently Yoshiki said in some live stream that he called Toshi but he didn't respond and his contract with X Japan was finishing while the song was in production so he asked Hyde to do the vocals. It just seems quite strange. I think Toshi is handling the situation well but I wonder about the future of X at this point. Number one being the ALBUM.

[bunnychuu45]

This X Japan drama with Red Swan gets bigger and bigger💦 I'm a bit worried about Toshi💦

[bunnychuu45]

It's interesting how most of the tracks on Zilch's album contain distinct lyrics from their Japanese equivalents. These lyrics usually make sense, even if they can be a bit abstract. The lyrics for "Doubt", however, make no sense in English, even with that consideration. This is particularly interesting to me because it's like the English lyrics are trying to phonetically mimic the Japanese ones. E.g. "Ga-ba-re-ba so no-ba-de" becomes "But-I-ne-ver saw no-bo-dy" and so on. I wonder why?

Well I mean in translating there is straight translation where you translate word for word and then there is translating feeling. The lyrics in Doubt are pretty hard to translate to English in my opinion. Not because it’s hard as in the words but because of what he is trying to portray without it sounding ridiculous in English. In the lyrics he frequently uses imagery and sayings that only makes sense to Japanese people. If I was asked to translate Doubt into English I probably would have gone the same route and just start from zero to make a new song while keeping the feeling he wanted to appeal to American audiences. The words also have to match the rhythmn of the song too. Incidently the song “Sukiyaki”/“It’s All Because Of You” was done this way and turned out to be a huge hit in America.

[bunnychuu45]

I just turned 30‥

Blah

[bunnychuu45]

hi! i hope you're doing well 💖 i just wanted to ask if you have any books you'd recommend that are specifically about hide or at least about X? either in english or japanese is okay! thank you 😊

Thank you <3To be honest, I don’t like most books about hide LOL most of the information in them are repeated from magazines and they are generally expensive. The ones published by his company I mean. The only book I liked published by Headwax was ‘Pinky Promise’.

 INA recently wrote a book about hide and I heard from people who read it that it was a really touching book.  It is called 君のいない世界~hideと過ごした2486日間の軌跡~

Most people know about Hiroshi (hide’s younger brother and manager) and his book 兄弟 追憶のhide.. I guess a lot of people didn’t like the way he portrayed hide but I mean it was an interesting version of hide that probably Hiroshi only saw since they were brothers.  I liked it.

Yoshiki, Toshi and Taiji’s biography books have sections on hide and they can be found translated online in English.

Mayuko, the girl who hide donated his bone marrow to has a book about her memories of hide 「がんばんだぞ」―優しさと、愛と勇気をありがとう.. I didn’t read all of it but some sections are really heartwarming.

To be honest the most interesting books I read were ‘Kyodai’ and a book written by X’s Sony manager すべての始まり―エックスという青春 which is more about X than hide but it was a good read.

 Most of the information I get on them is through older fans and magazine interviews so if you have the chance, I would look for magazine interview collections.  Learning about hide through his own words is my favorite because I feel like in books people tend to project their feelings on the person.

[bunnychuu45]

I bought DIE's "Fragile" album, where he performed "Jewel" (which was performed during the Ja, Zoo tour) and where hide played on the titular track. I have the whole booklet scanned. Would you be interested in translating it for your website or hosting the content? Not sure who else would be interested.

Hm.. to be honest I was thinking of taking the website down.  I just don’t have the money to keep hosting it especially when I don’t even have the time to update it.. if there is a short section about that song I can translate it here.

[bunnychuu45]

Is the new Hide documentary gonna have a dvd?

Junk Story was released on DVD/Blu-ray so I think there is a good chance it will be but if it is it won’t be for another year or so.  No information right now, sorry :[

[bunnychuu45]

Were Hide and Hyde from (larc en ciel) friends? I know Yoshiki is friends with Hyde although I don’t know if they were friends from a long time ago or if they became friends recently.

In the past it is said they saw each other at parties, drank together and interacted and stuff but I doubt they were big friends back then.  In the 90′s hide and X were big acts.  If you know about Japan’s senpai and kohai system, it was most likely like that.  hide, Yoshiki, X were senpai and quite famous, L’arc is a kohai band, albeit famous in those times but still not on their “level” so to say.  Therefore, I am going to speculate that they were “up and comers” who were invited to a lot of parties that X members were also invited to and perhaps once in a while members of L’arc were invited by X members themselves.  Yukihiro was under Ecstasy Records at some point so there was a connection there as well.

I’m only guessing that they weren’t big friends despite these connections due to the fact that Yoshiki was producing Glay so X Japan was more affiliated with them.  Glay and L’arc were considered rivals back in the 90′s so they probably weren’t close.  Also there are rumors that Hyde and Yoshiki didn’t get along in the past and apparently Tetsuya had said he hated visual kei which probably didn’t sit well to the founders of visual kei much less the people who coined the term ‘visual kei’ if true.

Now that X Japan, Glay and Hyde are on the same legendary level, they are probably more freely interacting with each other in the current time.  Of course half of this is my speculation.

Information you’ve probably already heard before: Hyde actually used to go by ‘Hide’ at first but didn’t want to be confused for X Japan’s ‘hide’ so that is apparently how the ‘y’ in Hyde and the pronunciation came to be.  

[bunnychuu45]

More fun observations to share with you! I feel that English speakers may have trouble understanding the lyrics to "Squeeze It!!", and even the Japanese Wikipedia page for Beauty and Stupid says it's meant to be a prototype for Zilch's "Easy Jesus". HOWEVER, I believe otherwise. I actually think it's an alternate/demo version of LemonED I Scream based on the lyrics alone. I'll post what I think are the lyrics in the next comment I make to you.

Continued:

When I’m walking down the street/Well I was looking for (?)/Then it happened suddenly/At my feet/But I can’t find it out/Well everybody say hate it/I don’t care if nobody can love it!/Well Squeeze You, Squeeze Me, Squeeze It!! (Take me higher, higher)/Well Squeeze You, Squeeze Me, Squeeze It!! (Oh it’s a lemon, lemon, lemon I~yeah)

[Second Part] Well it had something spiney head/Well nobody’s gonna (?) to touch it/I got the pain, I feel so fine, yeah/Well, I can’t find it out/When everybody’s gonna take it/I don’t care if nobody can love it!/Well Squeeze You, Squeeze Me, Squeeze It!! (I’ve got a sweet poison cake)/Well Squeeze You, Squeeze Me, Squeeze It!! (Sweet ???)/Well Squeeze You, Squeeze Me, Squeeze It!! (Oh it’s a lemon, lemon, lemon I~yeah)