Maria-sama ga Miteru:Notes

Translator Notes

Volume 1

Meiji34

• Is 1901. For more information about the traditional Japanese labeling of years, check out this site.

Takarazuka

• The Takarazuka Revue is a famous all-female theatrics group in Japan, in which women play both the male and female roles.

warashibechouja

• Literally translated, 'the straw millionaire,' it's a fairy tale about a poor man who was down to some straw, and after he exchanged his straw, he continued to make exchanges until, in the end, he became extremely rich.

botamochi

• I don't think this is a standard Japanese phrase. She's saying "it's like pulling a snack out of a shelf, our a horse out of a gourd," essentially trying to say it came out of the blue. I decided to leave it in, for cultural reference's sake.

check

• This is a baseball reference. Pitchers often throw balls back to their bases in order to, bluntly, try to tag out runners. This is called 'checking the runner,' and is in reality a way to keep fast runners honest, by ensuring that they don't get too greedy by stepping far away from the base. In this case, Rosa Chinensis was throwing a light jab to Shimako-san, as despite their being on relatively friendly terms, the latter DID reject her sister.

sakuratei

• Tei means restaurant, and they named themselves in a quite straightforward way

Itadakimasu, Gochisousama

• These have no direct translations and they don't have any English equivalent, as far as I know. If someone comes up with one, I am more than happy to find out. You say "Itadakimasu" prior to eating, and "Gochisousama" after, as an expression of gratitude for the meal.

Volume 2

kawaraban

• Means "Tile block print," a type of newspaper in the Tokugawa era. In this case, though, rather than being written 瓦版 via kanji, it's written かわら版, which would imply that it's being used as a name, thus I simply romanized it.

kendo

• Taishou (大将), Fukushou (副将), Chuuken (中堅), Jihou (次峰), Senpou (先鋒)
• Respectively, General, Second-in-command, Mainstay, Second Guard, and the Advance Guard

Urashima

• An old Japanese folk tale about a fisherman who rescues a turtle, receives an invitation to an undersea castle, is given a box as a gift (but told never to open it), ends up opening it, and finds himself pulling a Rumplestiltzkin.[1]

Volume 3

shichigosan

• Rite of passage ceremony for girls aged three and seven, and boys aged three and five. You wear a kimono to these festivals, often for the first, and for a lot of people nowadays, last time.

Volume 4

zabuton

• Zabuton are literally the square cushions that you place on tatami to sit on. But the cultural context of this usage is a type of quiz show. There's a decent variety of quiz shows and the likes that use zabuton as a means of keeping score (so the highest scoring people end up sitting on like a half-dozen zabuton), but the one most related is where the show's participants are all comedians, and as the host reads aloud a story or anecdote, the participants must 突っ込み, or interject in a humorous manner. And, of course, in this case, Tsutako-san fired off a good shot at Yumi. The culture of tsukkomi is a bit tough to explain, so I'll leave it to wikipedia, if you're interested, but hopefully you get the idea. [2]