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Naze Besto is a way of life ... sort of.
"Naze besto" is one of the catch phrases used by 上田次郎 (Ueda Jiro) in the Japanese TV show Trick (D-Addicts wiki link). The show is about a Physics professor (Ueda) and a part-time magician 山田奈緒子 (Yamada Naoko). They travel the length and breadth of Japan, solving paranormal mysteries.
The full catch phrase is 「なぜベスト尽くさなきのか？」 ("Why don't you do your best?").
At several times during the run of the show (and the subsequent films and TV specials) different characters reference several books that Udea has written. Just like other shows (wikipedia link), the books that have been released "in-universe" have also been released as merchandise.
This means that you can purchase Ueda's Books (wikipedia link), including 日本科学技術大学教授上田次郎のなぜベスト尽くさなきのか？ (Japan Technology University's Professor Ueda Jiro's "Why Don't You Do Your Best?") and 日本科学技術大学教授上田次郎のどんと来い、超常現象 (単行本) (Japan Technology University's Professor Ueda Jiro's "C'mon Strange Powers!").
日本科学技術大学教授上田次郎のなぜベスト尽くさなきのか？ (Japan Technology University's Professor Ueda Jiro's "Why Don't You Do Your Best?") is often shortened to ぜベスト尽くさなきのか？ ("Why don't you do your best?"). And 日本科学技術大学教授上田次郎のどんと来い、超常現象 (単行本) (Japan Technology University's Professor Ueda Jiro's "C'mon Strange Powers!") is often shortened to どんと来い ("Donto Koi!").
As a side note, "どんと来い!" seems to be Ueda's catch phrase throughout most of season 2 and the first 2 films. After that every other character starts to use it. I think that the production staff were trying to start a trend, myself.
This project is an attempt to translate the book なぜベスト尽くさなきのか？
This is a solo project, as I (Jamie "GaProgMan" Taylor) am the only person working on it. There will be no outside help with the translation. At least, until I reach the end of the project (or an arbitrary milestone) and start looking for people who can check my translation.
Partly because I want to improve my Japanese reading ability and vocabulary knowledge base, and partly because I want to read the book. Also I'm sure that other, English speaking people will want to read it too, as it gives a rare glimpse into Japanese culture and humour that many books on Japan (or indeed translated Japanese books) don't.
I'm going to be entering the entire translation into a series of LaTeX (wikipedia link) files, which will be compiled together to create a PDF that can be freely distributed. I will be making this project open source, too. Which means that it will be one of the first (that I know of) open source translations of a Japanese fictional book.
This means (from my point of view), that I'll be releasing the LaTeX files, along with my translation notes, for free. These files will be found in this GitHub repo (the one that you are reading the wiki for, right now). The reason for this is so that others will be able to take my translation notes and improve the overall translation, or even translate it into another language.
The book, itself, has several images - both hand drawn and actual photos of 阿部寛 (Abe Hiroshi) [the person who portrays Ueda in the show] from his career as a model. I will not be providing scans of these images. This is because the images will be covered by copyright laws. Plus, I don't want to destroy a book that is this difficult to find, just to scan the images.
I do own a copy of the book. I am not translating a scan of the book, or any other pirated version of it. In fact, here (link to my blog) is a blog post that I wrote when I received it in the mail.
All that I can say is "probably". I've got quite a few projects going on at the minute (not to mention that I have just moved, too). so I can't say for certain that I will be updating this wiki as I progress through this project.
However, I can say this: I'll be writing blog posts about the process. They will all be uploaded to my blog and can be found here (link to my blog). I'll make sure that they all get categorized as "Naze Diaries"
If I get the time, I will write several pages for each of the main characters in the show (since they turn up in the book), and include them in this wiki project.