Our two-tailed cat boy is translated! And I have a couple notes for him~
First things first, you’ll notice throughout his translated story that I use the term onsen, which is a Japanese term that often gets translated as ‘hot spring’. I also did not italicize the word throughout, even though it’s Japanese, because I am lazy and forgot. However, I intentionally did not translate the word to ‘hot spring’ because it actually isn’t a direct translation. It’s similar, sure, and in most cases it’s fine. But I wanted to try and keep some of the original intent, or at least what I learned from some minor research.
A hot spring refers to any spring produced by geothermally heated groundwater. That’s it. However, an onsen specifically refers to hot springs that are regulated temperatures with specifical mineral properties. There’s actually a law in Japan that stipulates an onsen must be 24°C/ 75°F with the originating spring being at a depth of at least 1.5 kilometers, and contain specific amounts of minerals such as sulphur, sodium, iron, and magnesium. I had no idea there was this much regulation on it! So as you can see, an onsen is a more specific type of onsen, so that’s the main reason I opted to not translate the word in Nayuta’s story.
The second thing I wanted to address was Nayuta’s family name, Nekomata. If you’re a yokai enthusiast like me, you’ve probably heard the term before. A nekomata is a cat with a forked tail and falls under the category of bakeneko (monster cats) in Japanese folklore. Nekomata specifically have just the two tails, and only the most long-lived (and thus most intelligent) of cats develop this fork and become nekomata. Folklore tells of nekomata being able to walk on their hind legs and speak human languages. Contrary to Nayuta’s behavior, nekomata look down on humans with contempt and are always malicious or violent. They can even summon fireballs! And control corpses like a necromancer! I’m glad Nayuta is the complete opposite of this as he’s just an absolute sweetheart. You can learn more about bakeneko, nekomata, and other yokai on this website.