Jump to Nagano (A Mint special story) Translation by Dimitri Ashling All rights held by the authoress, Wataru Yoshizumi. Special thanks again to Masatomo (for checking my translations), and Karen Duffy (for showing me this story in the 1st place) Page 1 Maria: This time's a special ocassion! Noel: This is an observation report from the Olympics! I love the Olympics! I'm so happy they're being held in Japan. Maria: What can we see today? Sasa: The pairs short program in figure skating. The lifts and spins are set in advance. They'll combine it with their skate technique. In the short program, they'll get scored for their expression. Then in the freestyle, they'll get scored for their artistic talent. Then they'll get all those scores together, and decide on the rankings. Maria, Miyu & Noel: That's wonderful, Sasa. You know lots of stuff. Arrows to the 3 of them: Clueless. Sasa:...........(You should look it up.) Page 2 This pair from Russia placed 1st in the short program. Oksana Kazakova and Artur Dimitriev. Miyu: Usually the woman can't take her eyes off the man, but I think this pair is separate. With another partner, Dimitriev won the gold medal at Albertville and the silver medal at Lillehamer. Just like I thought, they were lovely! In freestyle, this pair won the gold medal too. This pair is also from Russia. They made 3rd place. Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze. Maria: The shorter one of this pair, Elena, is a really pretty girl. They're partners in love at 21 and 20, too! In freestyle, they won the silver medal! They landed the triple jump perfectly!! Anton can't drive, though. Page 3 After that, it was men's ice hockey. Japan vs. France! At 7:36 Japan scored its first goal! Sasa & Noel: Yay! For the next 14:42, the score was tied. Sasa & Noel: Yawn.. But right then, Japan scored its second goal!! Sasa & Noel: Yay! Right after the scond period started, France tied the score again. After that, the balance held for a long time. Noel: But France looks like they're much better than Japan... They're always hitting their passes and stuff. Miyu: Their goalkeeper is big. He's a man and a half all by himself. Sasa: But after all this time, the score's still tied. Japan's really doing great. I wonder when this standoff will end... Page 4 The standoff ended three minutes later, when France scored its third goal! Japan was in BIG TROUBLE!! Right after that, France commited a foul, and one of their players entered the penalty box. A 5 on 4 power play is an adavatage. In this situation, Japan took a timeout. There wasn't much time left. With this chance to live, Japan came up with a daring plan!! Maria: What the? Japan has no goalkeeper... and 6 forwards!? Who's gonna protect the goal when there's a full-scale attack!? Sasa: The fight's begun! But France protected their goal really well! Then they took the puck, and scored their 4th goal on Japan's empty net! And another goal after that! In the end Japan lost 5-2, but it was a great game. Noel: That was lots of fun! Maria: Oh, it's a printclub! The snowlets version! Maria & Noel (in the printclub): Yippee! Miyu: Want a photo, Sasa? Sasa: I don't want one. (In a printclub, I was weak with a guy...) Page 5 Sasa: So shall we go? Noel: Huh, that's it? Let's go see more!! Like the jumping or speed skating. Maria: We can't, we've got school. But worse than that, we don't have any more tickets. Noel: Tickets... We can buy from the ticket scalpers______ Maria & Sasa: Stop that. Sign: I buy tickets to upcoming events. Guy: Tickets, tickets. There's lots of foreigners. I wonder why there aren't any Japanese. Noel: No way, I want to see more. Sasa: Just bear watching it on TV! Miyu: In next month's issue, Mintna Bokura resumes. Read the last 2 chapters one more time, so you're up to date with the story.