It
The Girl Who Could Run Through Time
by Yasutaka Tsutsuiwas after school when she heard the sound of breaking glass in an empty science lab. A sweet scent came drifting from the liquid that had spilt out of the broken test tube. I know this smell… thought Kazuko Yosiyama as she lost continues and fell to the floor. When she came to, strange things started happening all around her, things that mingled time and memories.

It’s a story of a young girl’s journey through a mysterious world and painful experiences. It’ll touch our hearts and stand the test of time.

That’s the translation of the back of the book that I’m going to translate. For those of you who look, you’ll notice a new category to the right there. It’s the acronym for the book title. It’s an older book (written in 1976) which is why I’m kind of surprised it’s never been translated to English. Of course, I’ve only done a cursory search, so it might have been at one point in time (it was written in 76). I’m surprised because it’s been turned into a movie (1983), a manga (2004) and recently an anime movie (2006). Someone else might be translating this, I don’t know. Anyway, it’s written for junior high schoolers so it’s a real easy read. I got it because the anime movie was decent and I’ve wanted to read a native Japanese SF story ever since I got good enough to read novels, plus it’s only like 200 pages. I hope those of you who read it enjoy it. I want to try to figure out how to make that section top post so that I can just translate chapter by chapter and it can be read from top to bottom. Oh, and apparently the movie/ anime/ other things have been given the title “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” but I don’t like that translation. Yes, she leaps, but the Japanese word “kakeru” doesn’t mean leap. It means like 50,000,000,000 things, and leap is not one of them, however run is. I hope you enjoy.

Brian Schuch