Blue Train

EN: (the lyrics here are not written as in the original format but I will follow them anyhow) A "white" (pure) voice tearing through the dark, the words you spit out A heart which stabs my chest with icy thoughts The final stop for this endless "blue" (innocence) A "now" [reality] like waking from a dream <-this is 現在 "genzai" [actual state] but sang as "ima", now

I just plugged up the wound but the feelings overflow You say things like "real," such easy things to say The final stop for we who have no dreams A "now" like waking from a dream

Here, the sunset runs openly Like trundling over a warped rail How far?, you ask Until this all finally runs out in the end I want to go on, I want to go on

Out there, so far away Got no reason, just anxious to keep going

The sunset runs openly Like trundling over a warped rail Melancholy lurks in every day Until this all finally runs out in the end I want to live, I want to live

"Blue Train" was a general name for the sleeper trains which used to connect much of Japan, much like in the West romanticized as an adventurous journey in the popular imagination. They lost popularity to faster, newer trains and aviation and were eventually forced into retirement. At the time of this song they were still going, but with a much reduced passenger count (I think averaging 30% of capacity) and most routes having already closed.

Picture a senior class trip, or newlyweds on honeymoon, or a small town dreamer moving to the big city. Your travel time measured in days, not minutes or hours. There's time to chat, to play, to think, to live as the world around you constantly changes from the ordinary and familiar and you step out into a brand-new unknown. There's a significance to such a journey, a memory that will remain.

And now the trains are infused with the grime of decades of use, worn down and fading into obsolescence. The public is muttering that it should just be done with already but they're still limping along, knowing that just beyond the horizon lurks a true, final "last stop."

It's these kinds of themes that caused Fanclub to be regarded as unusually dark for Ajikan.