"Ryugakusei" - or "you gotta stay"?

Damn, you haven’t found the Monkey Majik? It’s not too late. Come on, hey yo!

Have you ever heard a song in a foreign language and thought you recognized a phrase from your native language in there? I certainly have - “It must’ve been something you said” becomes “Du musst besoffen bestellen”, which means “you have to order while drunk”.

Now, what if you were listening to a song in a foreign language and that keeps happening, constantly? For a moment, you may ponder what’s wrong with your head. But soon after, you’ll come to realize that no, you haven’t crossed the edge to insanity yet. Yet. What if the artists planned this all along?

Enter MONKEY MAJIK. A Canadian-Japanese band consisting of the canadian brothers Maynard and Blaise Plant who are the lead guitarists and vocalists, as well as two Japanese members, Tax and Dick, playing the drums and bass respectively. On their own, they’re already a force to be reckoned with. But when they paired up with Okazaki Taiiku, someone who’s already well-versed in lyrical as well as phonetical tomfoolery, well… Here, take a gander (if you’re in a hurry, feel free to skip the one minute long intro):

Alright, then. I know the lyrics are really special and all, but this thing has an absolutely insane grooviness to it, to the point where it’s almost criminal. Very smooth.

Like I just said though, we’re mainly here for the lyrics. The lyrics aren’t deep, but the song is still an absolute lyrical masterpiece! Yes, you don’t need double/triple/quadruple entendres with extra cheese and salsa to achieve lyrical perfection! Look at it, it’s beautiful!

…

Ahem.

”What did I just witness?”

As you may have been able to guess from the music video, the main plot revolves around a Japanese exchange student (portrayed by Okazaki Taiiku) going to America, resulting in him being pretty damn confused. He finds out about a party going down, and our boy wants in.

This song also has another side to it: A generic love song. No fanfare, no blackjack and hookers. Nothing spectacular.

However, these two stories are being told at the same time. Literally. One line sounds almost the same in both languages, but means something completely different. Like the title! “Ryugakusei” kinda sounds like “You gotta stay”, while actually meaning “exchange student”. Doing that in a way that results in a completely coherent song takes some serious skill. This is what makes this song really damn unique - I’ve never seen anything like it before, and doubt I’ll see anything like it in the future.

To be completely honest, I’m not sure if I’m scared or impressed. Imagine the amount of man-hours went into trying to make a concept like this work well. But, they actually managed to pull it off! And while it’s true that Okazaki Taiiku is no stranger to this sort of stuff, as he did something fairly similar in one of his songs before, this time around he’s absolutely mastered that art of making Japanese sound like English. His first attempt, called “Natural Lips”, was pretty decent in its own right, but it’s not as understandable and coherent as Ryugakusei, at least in my opinion.

Beyond the chorus, there’s also a few other places where the linguistical magic happens, but isn’t pointed out by the subtitles. For instance, when Okazaki Taiiku starts rapping for a bit, he says something that sounds similar to “Kevin”. There’s also something in there that sounds like “Damn, you haven’t found the Monkey Majik? It’s not too late!” in there. I’m not too sure if that’s actually what he’s saying, but that’s part of what makes it so great - it’s just like when you actually mishear something in a song and have to stop and think “Wait, did he actually just say that or am I imagining things?”. Also, yeah, that’s the line I yoinked to use at the very beginning of this article. Sorry, not sorry.

On an unrelated note, the way Okazaki Taiiku just pops off near the end is gonna live rent free in my head for years to come. Look at him go!

Conclusion

I highly recommend this song, even if you’re not into Japanese music. Really, I’ve shown it to a few people who don’t listen to Japanese music at all, and even they enjoyed it! The lyrics, the groove and the hilarious music video complement each other extremely well. There’s a reason it’s one of my all-time most played songs on last.fm, you know. Anyway, there’s not really much else to say here, unlike with that time I wrote about Reol’s “No title”. There’s no mystery to unravel here, no deep meaning to decipher, no lyrical puzzle to solve.

It’s just a really damn good song.