Translation: A Castaway's Story (Haruomi Hosono)

The Japanese is economical — two short verses and a chorus repeated verbatim; the individual lines are mostly short too — as befits someone in the narrator's position. So then I got to wondering whether Hosono's leisurely singing style isn't also a reflection of the speed of the narrator's conveyance.

I opted to elaborate rather than stay faithfully terse. I couldn't get the details of the scene across clearly when I tried to keep the English lines as short as the Japanese. 

A Castaway's Story both opens and closes Side B of the Dandy.

:::

Right underneath me

something strange floats along:

a phantom version

of the town I'm from.

In every other direction

there's nothing visible at all.

I myself

am on a raft.

Even if I reached a desert island,

there'd be nobody there but me,

so I let the heat do what it will

and start to whistle —

as off-key as ever? 

Man, some things never change.

Right underneath me

the town goes on floating

as I go on poling

my raft along.

If I dove in right now,

it would fill up my memory:

that town

in which I was born.

     Even if I reached a desert island,

     there'd be nobody there but me,

     so I let the heat do what it will

     and start to whistle —

     as off-key as ever? 

     Man, some things never change.

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