lyrics and music by KUSANO MASAMUNE
Spitz are legends in the J-Rock scene, forming in the late 80s as a bunch of art students in Tokyo. They’ve enjoyed immense commercial success since then, mostly due to the fact that they’ve been making pretty good jangly pop without fail. This song, specifically, is one of their biggest hits, and the top comment on the YouTube video is someone remembering how they got the CD stuck in their car door at three years old.
Translation and notes under the cut:
Why is the new season always so full of miserable days?
I chased after you as you rode your bike down that river-bed road
Those records of memory and the exaggerated stories
I hung them from my tired shoulders, my grimace becoming dazzling
The same lines and the same time, with that everyday magic
In the form of speaking without thinking, I built it from the ground up
No one can touch it
A country just for the two of us (1)
Without letting go of your hand
With such great power
We’ll float up into the sky
Lu la la, riding the winds of the universe
Thrown away in the corner – that cat, still breathing
It resembles you, somehow; I pick it up and make our cheeks touch
The circular window I’d always looked at in the intersection is slightly dirty
The moon, only barely hidden in the night sky, looks down at me
On the bank of that ambushed dream, your surprised pupils
And so we, here and now are born again
No one can touch it
A country just for the two of us
Scattering a song that never ends
With such great power
We’ll float up into the sky
Lu la la, riding the winds of the universe
With such great power
We’ll float up into the sky
Lu la la, riding the winds of the universe
1: Had I not been so set on literal title translations, I might have titled the English version “A Country for the Two of Us,” but alas, my dedication to textual fidelity kills my desire for beauty.