[Coda]

I took three years of Japanese in college, but I started listening to Japanese music before I got good at the language.

I also played a lot of Dance Dance Revolution in college. One of my favorite songs was "true..." by Riyu Kosaka. Its lyrics are, of course, in Japanese. It has enjoyable steps, not too hard but not boring either, and the music is good.

ã*れのために笑é¡� ��でいるの？ (dare no tame ni egao de iru no?)
ã*れのために生ã� �てゆくの？ (dare no tame ni ikiteyuku no?)
教えてほしい、 あなたの他にい゠‹ã‚“ã*と (oshiete hoshii, anata no hoka ni iru nda to)
私にできること〠 それはあなた忘ã‚� �ること (watashi ni dekiru koto, sore wa anata wasureru koto)
きっとしなきゃ� �けない？ 本当にできる？ (kitto shinakya ikenai? hontou ni dekiru?)

Pretty lyrics. I picked them out well enough by ear to sing along with the song.

But then I was playing it one day and out of nowhere the lyrics suddenly made sense:

For who do I smile?
For who do I go on living?
Please tell me who there is besides you.
The things you can do for me are the things that you forget.
Do I have to do this? Can I really do it?

And I just about failed the song because I couldn't see through the tears.

(I did manage to clear it still, because it IS one of my favorite songs, so muscle memory was able to drag me through it with enough accuracy to not fail. Barely.)

EDIT: If you look up the lyrics for the song, this translation isn't going to match exactly, because this is my translation. The transcription is also different because I'm transcribing it the way I write Japanese instead of copy-pasting from the CD liner notes. And RemyWiki mistakenly included the lyrics for the wrong verse of the song.