{preface} by the homepage operator

hmm.. well let me start out by saying that .. well, *ahem*. I probably made a big mistake trying to make a page for the "famous" manga (comic) Kujaku-ou (peacock prince). A really really big mistake. Why was making a page on Kujaku-ou was a big mistake? Because I cannot comprehend lots (most) of it. Not only my Japanese is poor, but my Chinese is too. Why would I need Chinese to read a Japanese comic? Well, for this comic, it can be extremely helpful.

As you might have known before, Japanese borrow many Chinese characters .. and also English words too. Kujaku-ou is a comic with many references to Buddhism. Many of the mantras, gods, demons are written using Chinese characters. I hear that you need to have good knowledge of Buddhism to truely understand Kujaku-ou,..

However, I think that this comic would be even hard to understand even if you do know Japanese and Chinese. The mantras, for example, seem to be originally from Sanskrit.. So, its something like this.. i imagine: Sanskrit->Chinese->Japanese . hahaha.. Also, other spells.. ughh. like the popular "kuji" or "nine characters" spell, is from Taoists, and basically its reciting 9 characters, but it doesn't make any sense. I luckily found a translation of a Kujaku-ou video on the internet.. I was so surprised to find that the mantras are real. And that guy even wrote down the sanskrit pronouncation, the meaning, and the usage..

The "translations" are in a very early stage right now, but i can't guarantee i can translate many things (or even most things) properly. After translating the first three pages of the first volume, the translation really goes downhill. Anyway some problems were also the compound Chinese character.. The sign literally says "explosive laughter toleration arena".. i didn't really know what to make of it at first.. but i found out the "explosive laughter" = comedy. Thus, my translation was "Humorous Toleration arena"..

umm.. well, i guess.. if you see a crazy person in the library with books on Buddhism, Sanskrit, Japanese dictionary, a notebook, volumes of Kujaku-ou, ne.. that could be me ne. However, i haven't gotten to that stage yet. Actually, I went to the library today (not for working on this homepage) and found out some rival checked out all the Sanskrit books!! OH!! do i have competition?! Actually, I hope so! Yeah! another kujaku-ou fan!! :D :D :D

MY CURRENT SET OF REFERENCES: (puny=bad translations)

*Random House's Japanese-English & English-Japanese dictionary
(this is so puny, less than 1 inch thick.. and its Japanese-English section is 1/2 of that!!! i need a bigger dictionary!! but my brothers have the good ones)

*Han ying je deen (Chinese-English dictionary) by Commercial Press, LTD
=_=.. this.. is.. Mandarin pronounciation (i don't know Mandarin!! Can't it be in Cantonese too!?) And what's more, it has *simplified* characters.. AaAAAhh.. *simplified* = uncompatible to kujaku-ou

*Read and Write Chinese: a simplified guide to the Chinese CHaracters by Rita Mei-wah choy
aah. this is my favourite reference since it has Cantonese and Mandarin pronounciation.. Thank the gods!! its not simplified characters!! yee gods!! a miracle!

*my family (especially my father)
whats more convienient than walking dictionaries? I don't have to count the strokes of the characters or look up the radicals.. However, my father doesn't know many of the harder or rare characters that are in Kujaku-ou.. (sweat drop rolling down) The usual reply is something like "you must have wrote it wrong" or "there isn't such a character".