I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: NICOTINE-“Yesterday” (2005).

Since this story is about a guy making up words to “Yesterday,” I thought I’d find a cover of it.  Evidently there are several hundred covers to choose from, so I chose this one, from a band I didn’t know.

As you might judge by the cover, this is a punk version of the song.  But what a little research tells me is that Nicotine is a Japanese punk pop band.  And you can hear in Howie’s vocals that although his English is quite good, his accent shows up at certain moments.

The guitar starts out nicely, in a non-punk way.  Then when the vocals kicks in, you will either love it or hate it camp.  Howie’s voice is kind of whiny/bratty sounding, making the song either funny or irritating depending.

After the first verse, the band turns into the kind of fast pop punk that NOFX does–speedy drums, heavy guitars, etc.  Interestingly, his voice doesn’t speed up for the verses which makes the contrast all the more striking.

The album pictured above is indeed a full album of Beatles covers (the band seems to do a lot of covers), most of which are entertaining enough to listen to more than once.

[READ: September 17, 2014] “Yesterday”

As this story opens the narrator says

As far as I know, the only person to put Japanese lyrics to the Beatles song “Yesterday” (and to do so in the distinctive Kansai dialect, no less) was a guy named Kitaru.  He used to belt out his own version when he was taking a bath:

Yesterday
Is two days before tomorrow
The day after two days ago.

While “Yesterday” features prominently in the story, it is really a story of love and romance and friendship.  The narrator met Kitaru at the coffee shop where they worked.  There is a great deal of emphasis placed on Kitaru’s use of the Kansai dialect (which I know little about except to know that it is not the dialect of Tokyo).  The strange thing about Kitaru (well, one of the strange things) is that he was born in Tokyo.  But he adopted the Kansai dialect because he was a fan of the Hanshin Tigers.  He was such a big fan that he learned their dialect to be able to communicate with the fans when he went to the games.  (Learning Kansai is apparently like learning another language).  He was so into it, that he spoke it all the time.

The narrator, on the other hand, grew up speaking Kansai but after living in Tokyo for a month, he became fluent in Tokyo Standard (which also shows how odd it for Kitaru to do this).

This is mostly set up to show how odd Kitaru is.  Kitaru is a super nice guy and is clearly smart (if he learned the dialect), and yet he has failed his college entrance exam twice.  This is a problem because his girlfriend, the very pretty Erika, got into college on her first try, and he says he can’t date her properly unless he is also in college.  He and Erika have known each other for ever and are romantic without actually “doing ” anything.  He admits that he thinks of her almost like a sister and can’t imagine touching her in that way.  They are super close, and he considers her his girlfriend, but that’s it.

Since the narrator does not have a girlfriend, Kitaru suggest that he go out with Erika.  He trusts the narrator and he trusts Erika and he wants her to be happy, and he thinks the narrator can do that.  He also fears that she will meet some other guy in college anyway, so why shouldn’t she just date someone he likes.  The narrator is weirded out by this, especially hen Kitaru brings it up in front of Erika.  Erika is also angered, but she agrees, mostly to punish him.

They go on a date (a Woody Allen film) and have a very nice time, but mostly they talk about Erika and Kitaru as a couple.  She says she loves Kitaru but that it’s hard for her to go along with his extreme behaviors.  Like his Kansai obsession and the fact that he feels he can’t date her properly until he gets into college, but he doesn’t seem to be studying.  She eventually reveals that she is seeing someone else in college, although Kitaru doesn’t know about it.

When the narrator and Kitaru meet again, Kitaru wants to know how the date was.  The narrator reveals what they did (he doesn’t say anything about the college boyfriend), and Kitaru is surprised to discover she liked Woody Allen and pizza. But mostly, the narrator tries to get Kitaru to go after Erika more, so he doesn’t lose her.

The next thing, about two weeks later Kitaru quit his job at the coffee shop and pretty much vanished.

The coda of the story is set 16 years later, when the narrator runs into Erika again.  There’s some very satisfying payoffs here.  Despite some unusual characters, this is pretty conventional story and a very enjoyable one at that.