DRUNK AFTERNOON
By NUMBER GIRL
Music：MUKAI SHUTOKU
Lyrics：MUKAI SHUTOKU
———
夏が過ぎて 真昼の酩酊
オレは傍観者。都会の中枢
半冷たく午後の風はふわふわと
窓から風景にあいさつ
町に生きる人たちを知る
―故郷のあの香りは いまだ変わらないだろうか?―
砂漠の格闘 都会のまん中
色街では裸の女が待っているらしい
午後1時オレ、いま5杯目GALAXIE500 聞いて酩酊
LからRへ 行く間に見える 知らない景色
届きますか? つながりますか? あなたのところへ
———
natsu ga sugite mashiru no meitei
ore wa houkansha. tokai no chuusuu
han tsumetai gogo no kaze wa fuwa fuwa to
mado kara fuukei ni aisatsu
machi ni ikiru hito tachi wo shiru
-furusato no ano kaori wa imada kawaranai darouka?-
sabaku no kakutou tokai no man naka
iromachi de wa hadaka no onna ga matte iru rashii
gogo ichi ji ore, ima go hai me GALAXIE500 kiite meitei
L kara R he iku ma ni mieru shiranai keshiki
todokimasuka? tsunagarimasuka? anata no tokoro he
———
Summer is over. Drunk at midday
I am an onlooker. Watching the city’s center
The half freezing afternoon breeze is airy
A greeting from the window to the scenery
The people who live in the city know
-You think the smell of your hometown still hasn’t changed?-
A desert fight at the city’s center
The red light district seems to be waiting for naked women
At 1 PM, I listen to Galaxie 500 with 5 sake glasses, drunk
Left to right, I proceed to look around the room, these unfamiliar surroundings
Are you paying attention? Is this related? This is your place
———
Note: Ahito messes up the count-off on the recording of this song.
Galaxie 500 was an American band that was active from 1987 – 1991. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxie_500
Kanji lyrics found at http://jpop.yinyueabc.com
Seiteki Shoudou 
Could you explain how Ahito messes up the count in this song? Does he say the wrong thing accidentally?
Sure! He actually doesn’t mess up the count, but either drops his sticks or hits his sticks out of his hands while he’s tapping out the count with them. The count for this song is “D-A-V-E”. It possibly refers to Dave Fridmann, who produced Number Girl from 1999-2002, including this EP. Mukai also worked with Fridmann again in 2008 for Zazen Boys 4.
Thanks for the info! The version I had actually didn’t include him messing up, just the regular count. I recently downloaded the single again and it had this song with him messing up the count, sound like he broke a stick! 🙂
I know I’m 13 years too late, but I’m pretty sure there’s some errors here. I’m not a native speaker, so I could be missing more errors or off-base about these, but I figured I’d jump in and try to improve this a bit.
(no slight to the author of this blog – if you’re still reading this, I appreciate your work! Just wanna try to pin down the meaning of these amazing songs for English speakers.)
> 町に生きる人たちを知る
This was translated as:
> The people who live in the city know
But the を indicates that “the people who live in the city” are the object rather than the subject of the sentence. The narrator (presumably) knows the people in the city; it’s not that the people in the city know something.
> 砂漠の格闘 都会のまん中
Was translated as:
> A desert fight at the city’s center
This is literally correct, but it sounds nonsensical. What’s a “desert fight”? Honestly, though, I’m really not sure about this one. DeepL suggests “desert warfare”, which is at least a thing, but taken together still doesn’t mean a whole lot more than “colorless green ideas sleep furiously”. I asked on the internet a few months back and someone suggested that 砂漠 can sometimes euphemistically refer to the big city – similar to how we might call a big city a “concrete jungle” or something like that in English. Unfortunately I can’t find anything elsewhere to corroborate that (no dictionaries, bilingual or otherwise, that I’ve looked at suggest this), but the person who suggested it seemed knowledgeable and it does at least make some kind of sense.
So the narrator could be watching a fight in “the concrete jungle” from his window, or could be describing the struggle of existence in the middle of an urban setting. The next line kind of suggests that latter reading…he is, to use modern parlance, dying of “thirst” in the desert, but in the red light district…
I do think that might be the intended meaning, but it’s difficult to translate even using the “urban desert” “concrete jungle” mapping, because a desert has connotations of isolation and aridness that fit sexual frustration, and jungles don’t. Never mind the various kinds of ambiguity that it’s hard to avoid pinning down…I made A Choice in my translation below.
> 色街では裸の女が待っているらしい
Was translated as
> The red light district seems to be waiting for naked women
Again, there’s a confusion here about the subject. The translator probably saw the （で）は after 色待 and interpreted that as a topic marker implying subject, which is incorrect here – the は is just for emphasis or contrast. Also, if you’re waiting for someone, that’s marked with に; here, the “naked women” are marked with が, indicating that they’re the subject – they’re the ones waiting.
Finally, the last line:
> 届きますか? つながりますか? あなたのところへ
Translated as:
> Are you paying attention? Is this related? This is your place
I have my doubts about the former two sentences being the best way to translate this, but they’re not necessarily incorrect. I just think 届きます here is meant to be “is this reaching you” (an alternate – but actually more common AFAIK – meaning), and instead of つながります being “is this related?”, it’s more like “is this connecting?” – like a telephone. And あなたのところ does mean “your place”, but the へ indicates movement towards it – literally just a fragment, “to your place”. Not totally clear but certainly a very different meaning than “this is your place”, which suggests that the narrator is already there. I think it’s just a continuation of that thought: “Is this reaching [your place]? Is this connecting [to your place]?”
There’s an ameliorated version of this translation below. I mostly stuck to this original stylistically; beyond the fixes to the errors discussed above, I did make a few changes to make things read a little more naturally to me.
—
Summer is over. Drunk at midday
I am an onlooker. The middle of the city
The half freezing afternoon breeze is blowing softly
From my window I greet the scenery
I know the people who live in the city
You think the smell of your hometown still hasn’t changed?
Struggling in the desert, the heart of the city
But I hear that in the red light district naked women are waiting
1 PM, on my fifth glass, I’m listening to Galaxie 500, drunk
Left to right, I start looking around the room, these unfamiliar surroundings
Am I reaching you? Am I getting through…to you?!