rewarded myself by getting a copy of the final volume of eyeshield 21, in japanese. it's hell expensive, about twice the normal price, but i decided i wouldnt wait around for the taiwanese to translate it.

spent the mrt ride home reading that volume like heavy literature. i kind of overestimated my reading abilities. after years of regular listening to bldrama where the dialogue is read out for me, i think i've been spoiled rotten. and also, i've only practiced reading passages in perfect written japanese for jlpt, so when you have hiruma, agon, gaou etc speaking in gangster japanese.. things like puro no sekai ni ikitee, mitee na kibou, ..na kotta, and you have agon adding 'kasu' after his sentences like it's some sort of mantra, it becomes a horror to understand, or even to figure out where the individual words start and end. so i found myself having to silently mouth the words in utmost concentration to get what it was talking about.

sigh. really still have a long long way to go.

but i dont regret trying. hiruma is almost quoteworthy sometimes, in murata sensei's original, intended words.

and there's this.. suffix that hiruma always uses before the nasty nicknames he gives to people. it's 'kuso', meaning 'shitty' in the anime (he calls people things like kuso chibi, kuso mane, kuso jiji, kuso dread etc), so when i see this single kanji popping up all over in his speechi assumed it was read as such, because i couldnt read the kunyomi on the train without squinting. it was only when i reached home that i leaned in and read the kunyomi out loud:

fa-ki-n-gu..

...

omgosh. no wonder it was replaced with something harmless like 'kuso' in the anime, to keep ratings down. the japanese actually have a kanji for that word??!!!