PUFF PUFF

  • Lyrics & Music: Kazuya Yoshii
  • Arrangement: The Yellow Monkey

Original Lyrics

恋はひかえめに JUST A LITTLE GIRL
恋はひかえめに JUST A LITTLE GIRL
泣くのはおよしよ JUST A LITTLE GIRL
死ぬのはおよしよ JUST A LITTLE GIRL

目には目を 歯には歯を
すかしたヤサ男には ストロベリーフレーズ

備えあれば 憂いなし
気付くのが遅い シーラカンス

夕日が落ちる 夕日が落ちる
夕日が落ちる 夕日が落ちる


Romanized Lyrics

koi wa hikaeme ni JUST A LITTLE GIRL
koi wa hikaeme ni JUST A LITTLE GIRL
naku no wa oyoshi yo JUST A LITTLE GIRL
shinu no wa oyoshi yo JUST A LITTLE GIRL

me ni wa me wo ni ni wa ha wo
sukashita yasa otoko ni wa strawberry fraise

sonae areba urei nashi
kizuku no ga osoi shiirakansu

yuuhi ga ochiru yuuhi ga ochiru
yuuhi ga ochiru yuuhi ga ochiru


Translated Lyrics

Love is always unassuming, just a little girl
Love is always unassuming, just a little girl
Stop your crying, just a little girl
Stop your dying, just a little girl

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth
A gentleman putting on airs, with strawberries

Well prepared means no worries in time of need
The Coelacanth are so slow to realize

The sun will set, the sun will set
The sun will set, the sun will set


Notes

Yoshii sings what is arguably the most strangely presented song on Experience Movie in an even more ridiculous falsetto than the one he used back in Song For Night Snails. Puff Puff acts as a very short filler filler track that is probably meant to be funny, and begins an infrequent tradition that we’ll see again on a couple of other Yemon albums in the future. In this case Yoshii’s only accompaniment is from a piano, and the song is purposefully recorded kind of low and grainy (probably to make it sound old time-y). He’s said in an interview that this song was inspired by the 70s American rock band Sparks.

The “strawberry fraise” line is a little misleading. If assume that both of these are English words, you’d end up with “strawberry phrase”. That COULD be what’s intended here, but I kind of doubt it. “Fraise” is also the French word for “strawberry”, and is also in the English language dictionary as meaning “(in cooking) a strawberry”. Yoshii was probably just repeating the word in two different languages, because it’s certainly less likely that a Japanese speaker would be familiar with the word “fraise”, but would certainly know “strawberry”, and he still wanted the “elegant feel” of putting a French word in there as well.

The word “Coelacanth” in also used here (“shiirakansu” in Japanese), and it’s certainly something I heard for the first time here. Coelacanth are a rare species of fish that were thought to have gone extinct along with dinosaurs. In 1938 a South African museum curator discovered that they still existed.

I’m not completely sure what the title of this song means, if anything at all. The best I can come up with is the concept of the puff-puff that famed manga artist Akira Toriyama created in Dragon Ball, and later ended up carrying over into the popular Japanese role playing game series Dragon Quest (for which Toriyama did the character designs). It’s basically just the term for placing your face between a woman’s breasts. Think motor-boating, but not necessarily including the rapid shaking of the face! If there is a connection there it certainly isn’t obvious, but Dragon Ball did begin as a manga in 1984, and was certainly still extremely popular in 1993. Yoshii would also go on to perform the first opening theme song to Dragon Ball Super (“Chouzetsu Dynamic”) as a solo artist in 2015, shortly before ending his solo career to reunite with The Yellow Monkey. So…

This song hasn’t been performed live, at least not that I’m aware of. And even if they did want to make time to include this in a set, it would have been difficult early on since they didn’t start touring with a keyboardist until Smile. And that’s a whole two albums from now.