Hey everyone! Not much in this episode in term of story, but I hope that some people will still find some info in my post interesting.
*For those that missed my previous posts, this is a post where I talk about some trivia on Japanese culture and some nuances that were lost in the translation from the Japanese audio to the English subtitles of the newest episode of Oshi no Ko. I’m using the subs from HIDIVE since it’s probably the ones that most people watches the show with.*
*Disclaimer: This is only meant to be as interesting things that I wanted to share, and not as saying that the official translation was bad or wrong. Translations between two languages are often interpretations and translators tries to make a compelling story for their target audience. Also, I’m not a native speaker of either English or Japanese, so don’t take anything I say as gospel.*
# Episode 2
## Names
The name Meguro-gawa(目黒川) of the middle school where Ruby went is written as “Eye” “Black” “River”. It’s the name of a real river in the south part of Tokyo, in the Meguro City ward.
The Highschool that the twins are gonna be going to, is Youtou(陽東), “Sunshine”, “East”
## Idol Otaku [3m05]
During this episode, in the scene with Sarina POV, she used the abbreviation ドルオタ(doruota) that comes from アイドルオタク(aidoru otaku): Idol Otaku
## Two birds with one stone [3m58]
Just wanted to quickly mention that in Japanese, there’s the exact same expression as in English of “Two birds with one stone”: 一石二鳥(isseki nichou).
This is something that probably a lot of people doesn’t really think about, but I always find it interesting when two different language that evolved with different culture has the exact same expressions.
Bonus: In French, the equivalent is “Faire d’une pierre deux coups”, which is something like “Making two hits with one stone”
## Smoothly [6m06]
When Miyako is talking about the harsh reality of the Idol industry, she used the expression とんとん拍子(tonton byoushi) to say that things don’t go that “smoothly”.
The Japanese term comes from the sound of two taps とんとん(tonton) and the word for a tempo 拍子(hyoushi), to convey the image of a smooth tempo.
## Ai’s Steps [8m21]
One Japanese expression to express repeating someone’s mistakes, that Aqua used when talking about Ruby “treading in Ai’s steps” is 轍を踏む(tetsu wo fumu).
The literal meaning is of “stepping” in the “wheel tracks” (of a previous cart)
## Good and Bad [11m09]
When Aqua is talking about the various types of underground idol groups and that some are good and some are bad, he used an interesting expression (IMO) of ピンからキリまで(pin kara kiri made): basically talking about a range “from pin to kiri”.
* “Pin” is coming from the Portuguese “pinta” for a “dot”
* “Kiri” is from the Portuguese “cruz”: a “cross”
The dot became a symbol for 1, and the cross for 10 with the Japanese word being 十字架(juujika) and using the Kanji for ten 十 that looks like a cross.
The expression then became something used to talk about the range from the best to the worst.
Source: [https://hugkum.sho.jp/299998](https://hugkum.sho.jp/299998)
## Quite common [12m55]
Another expression that had an origin that I found interesting was ザラにある(zara ni aru). It was said by Miyako when talking about the various bad rumors coming from some undergound groups that are “quite common”.
In the Edo Period, there was three types of currency, Gold(金), Silver(銀) and Coins from non-precious materials(銭).
The common people was pretty much just getting access to the normal coins and from that currency, the cheapest one was the one-mon coin(一文銭) and was commonly refer to as ザラ(zara)
So, the expression ザラにある(zara ni aru): “having some zara”, comes from the meaning of “it’s obvious that everybody has some one-mon coin” to “it’s common/usual”.
Source: [https://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question\_detail/q11171074791](https://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q11171074791)
## From Lord knows where [17m02]
When Aqua is explaining to the Director that he doesn’t want Ruby to perform with some group “from Lord knows where”, the original Japanese expression was 馬の骨(uma no hone) to talk about a “person of doubtful origin”.
The literal sense of it is of “horse bones”.
It’s coming from an expression that was used to talk about something useless: 一に鶏肋、二に馬骨(ichi ni keiroku, ni ni umahone) “Chicken ribs for one, Horse bones for two” (not really sure about that translation, but it’s enough to get the gist)
Chicken ribs were seen as too small to be useful, and horse bones were not only too big, but were also difficult to dispose.
From that, horse bones were associated with someone that’s not needed and is useless to anyone.
Nowadays, it mostly have the meaning of an adult that you don’t know how they grew up or what they do as a living.
Source: [https://gogen-yurai.jp/umanohone/](https://gogen-yurai.jp/umanohone/)
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