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Communicating with the Japanese
Names & Slogans
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T-shirts
Slogans
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T-Shirts
are very popular, particularly among Japanese youth. The slogans
and "catch phrases" cover every subject imaginable.
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- "I got leied in Hawaii"
- Jassy Jams and the Old West
- Now baby. Tonight I'm feeling cool and hard
boiled
- The Green Bay Peckers, and
the Philadelphia Sexers
- What could be more "purr-fect" than living in a
cat house in Nevada?
- My life is a happy wind blowing through my
body
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Japanese
Product Names
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Product
names are very often English words with a cultural twist.
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- Cactus
Gasoline
- Violent Blue Jeans
- Family Germ (a type of wheat germ)
- Creap (a powdered coffee creamer - cream & powder mixes?)
- Pocari Sweat (a soft drink)
- Pecker Mechanical Pencils
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"My"
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"My" has also been incorporated in
many
familiar phrases, advertisements and product names to personalize and
make the expressions familiar and easy to remember.
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My Juice
- My Home
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My Green Life (a scrub brush)
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My
Car (the family car, not the company car)
- My Life, My Gas (ad for Tokyo Gas Company)
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My Bank, My Kinki (ad for an Osaka bank)
* Note: "Kinki" is a
geographical area near Osaka)
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Signs in
Japlish
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So you think
you can get by without learning Japanese?
Signs in English can be confusing and entertaining.
Here are a few favorites!
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Feel you up?”
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(Question from a gas station attendant,
meaning "fill it up?")
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The elevator is fixed for the next day. We regret that
you will be unbearable.
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(Elevator is out of order
until tomorrow. We apologies for the inconvenience)
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No smoking in bed and other disgusting behaviors
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(Sign in a hotel room)
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Vertical parking only
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(Parallel parking)
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Take
two tablets until passing away
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(Label
on a medicine bottle)
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Ladies
have fits upstairs
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(Sign
in a tailor's shop for fittings to be done upstairs)
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To
Learn Japanese or Not to Learn Japanese... |
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Perhaps
the best suggestion comes from Don Maloney in his humorous book, Japan,
It's Not All Raw Fish. He suggests...
"All foreigners should total up all the money they are
spending each month on Japanese lessons. Drop out of school and send the money to the 'Maloney Final
Solution to the Language Problem Fund.'
The Fund will use the money to teach English to the Japanese.
And since you will have free time, you can hire yourself out to
the Fund as an English teacher, earning extra money to boot."
Definitely
food for thought!?!?
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Author’s
Note: Beginning with my
first visit to Japan, and Asia, as a cultural exchange student, I have
been collecting interesting expressions, as I know others have.
Although it is impossible to remember when and where I first
encountered them, special acknowledgment is given to THE TOKYO WEEKENDER, and Miranda
Kenrick's,
Gems of Japanized English, 1988, Yen Books, for several selected for this
article.
Copyright
© 1999 Joyce Millet All Rights Reserved.
For reprint
requirements, please contact
us.
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