Skip to main content

Japanese English Makes me Laugh (a lot)

For those of you who are familiar with Japanese and Korean music know that randomly in the middle of the song they are liable to throw in an English word. So you'll be listening to this song and you won't understand it so it's like this: laelriajwelifafie....BABY...aleifaelifj...I'M YOUR MAN...faliejflaiejf...

You get the picture.
Turns out, the same principle is applied to random items as well. And often this English makes me laugh, because it's either
1. Gramatically incorrect, and they have absolutely no idea when I ask them if they know what it means
2.Gramatically correct but doesn't really make sense when you read it. Or rather, it seems like it should make sense, but on some level it doesn't.

Allow me to illustrate:
That's the cover of my obento box. I mean just read it!

I like this one too. The picture isn't very good, but it says, " Campus notebooks contain the best ruled foolscap suitable for writing." FOOLSCAP? I thought only monks and people in old books said that.

Inspiration comes of working. Uh-huh...

This is for a cram-school. A CRAM SCHOOL. And it says that. I just stood there and laughed for a few minutes before I could walk away from this. I'm sure people on the street thought I was quite the crazy foreigner.

Random plastic shopping bag. I just give up.

And just for kicks, here's a song example. This is a K-pop (Korean pop) group called SS501, and I actually really like this song. It just happens to be a great example for what I'm talking about.

Comments

  1. hahahah today i saw a sign in a car and it said p-enus xD
    sorry i don't have a picture of that x(

    ReplyDelete
  2. Are they saying "lub like this" well i do know how to love but i certainly don't know how to "lub" whatever that is.... BUT you bento is super cute even though it makes no sense heh heh, I think i'm gonna start a journal for you Claire because i have sooo much stories to tell you and it hasn't even been a month of school yet.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Cute bento box~ :)
    I love that song btw ^_^ I don't listen to SS501 a lot though... I'm obsessed with Big Bang atm xD
    I wish I could study abroad! It looks like so much fun :D

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Enoshima: The Heavenly Maiden and the Dragon

This past Monday was a national holiday -- Mountain Day -- so, of course, Troy and I headed to the beach instead. Well, to an island near a beach since (as some of you may know) I'm not exactly the beach-going type. Plus I'd just climbed Mount Fuji, which was more than enough mountain for me. Enoshima is a small island off the coast of Kanagawa Prefecture, fairly near Kamakura. It's connected to the mainland via a bridge, so you can just stroll on over from the train station. The entire island is dedicated to Benzaitan, the goddess of everything that flows -- time, water, speech, music, and knowledge. According to the "Enoshima Engi," (a history of the shrines and temples on Enoshima) there's also a legend associated with the creation of the island involving Benzaitan and a dragon. In brief, the area around Enoshima was once wracked by violent storms and earthquakes. Eventually the tumult ended and a heavenly maiden (Benzaitan) descended from the clouds....

Homecoming

This is it. It's Friday, February 3rd and in less than 24 hours I will leave this house for Tokyo train station, which will take me to the airport, which will take me...home. Most of this week has been taken up with goodbyes: to schoolmates and teachers, and later, close friends. There were tears involved. I think the photos will do it a lot more justice than I could: Kohei, from tennis group. All the tennis people got together for dinner at an okonomiyaki (think cabbage pancake, with yummy stuff like shrimp in it) but first we went to a boardwalk which had nighttime light shows. Top: Anime Club. They threw a small party for me, where we ate lots of food and watched (what else) anime and talked. Bottom: one of my English classes. They asked me to teach them an American game for the last day, so I taught everyone how to play Heads-Up 7-Up. They were pretty good at it. The other exchange student, Nom, and my Japanese teacher. The last view of school: the walk leading u...

Reflections on Typhoon Hagibis

As some of you may have known, this past weekend Typhoon Hagibis blew through Japan, specifically the Kanto region where Tokyo is. It had the grim distinction of being the strongest/most deadly storm to hit the region since Typhoon Ida in 1958. Typhoon classification scales are confusing (and, interestingly, the only difference between a "typhoon" and a "hurricane" is the naming convention of the region in which it occurs ), but at one point Hagibis was classified as a "violent typhoon," the strongest category the Japan Meteorological Agency has, roughly the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane. Fortunately it didn't make landfall at that strength, downgrading to a Category 3 equivalent storm. Personally, although Typhoon Hagibis (which means, appropriately, "speed" in Tagalog) was not the first typhoon I've (pardon the pun) weathered here in Japan, it was most certainly the most extreme. Most typhoons don't directly hit Kanto, inst...