An unexpected heavy parcel today contained five copies of the Worm book translated into Japanese. I had entirely forgotten this was going to happen. Here. in celebration, is some of the opening sentence. I have long been proud of writing the only pop science book that starts “once upon a time” and now I know, I hope, what the phrase looks like in Japanese.
Neither the inline image nor the linked image works on the archive page.
The phrase you clipped (“mukashi aru hi no koto, Jon”) says “Once upon a time*, John-“
*(it’s not the standard, storyteller-style way of saying ‘once upon a time’ that is shown here – that would be the first 3 letters of the clip repeated, pronounced “mukashi, mukashi” – I’ve never heard the variant in your image, but I’m not exactly a native speaker.)
Thanks for that. The “John” is John Sulston. Obviously, I made a guess at what seemed a reasonable number of characters. I’m so glad they almost kept the storytellers’ phrase, though.