Sekai Ni Hitotsu Dake No Hana

I fumbled badly during my Mambusho a.k.a Manbukagakusho scholarship interview today. I prepared for it, practised answering some expected questions with Mak, made some mental notes on this and that - and when the time came for me to give my best shot - I fumbled. Weng sungguh lah!

The 'weng' effect lasted all day long and I found myself grappling for words to fill this blog this evening. So, I'm reverting to the old trick an English teacher taught me once a long time ago - "when nothing else works, you can even write down your favorite song's lyric in your journal..."

Here goes:

Sekai Ni Hitotsu Dake No Hana - translation
- performed by SMAP (the Japanese group with Kimutaku, not the school in Labu), 2003)

You don't have to be number one
You're the only one who's just like you

I was looking at a lot of flowers
Lined up in front of a flower shop
Everybody has a favorite flower
But all of them are pretty, aren't they?
In the bucket they're proudly standing
Tall and straight, with confidence

In spite of that, why do we people
Want to compare ourselves this way?
Eventhough each of us is different,
Does everybody want to be number one?

That's right, each of us is
The only flower of our kind in all the world
Each of us has a different seed
Just do your best to make your own flower bloom

There's a person who's having trouble deciding
Laughing while looking upset
But all the flowers that worked so hard to bloom are beautiful
So it can't be helped
After a while, that person came out of the store,
Holding a bouquet of colorful flowers
With a happy-looking profile

I didn't know that person's name
But that day, they smiled at me
It was like finding a flower blooming
in a place no one else had noticed

That's right, each of us is
The only flower of our kind in all the world
Each of us has a different seed
Just do your best to make your own flower bloom

Small flowers and big flowers
They're not all the same
You don't have to be number one
You're the only one who's just like you

(note: found this on the net some time last year but can't exactly remember who did the translation)