Japanese English

(Big Danger in Little Osaka #14, 2008)

As you may already be aware, Japan is full of English. It is all-pervasive, written on signs, on walls, on packaging and on t-shirts. Sometimes it is correct. Other times, it’s not quite right but you can see what they’re going for. You probably wouldn’t find “Restrooms: please use them without hesitation” on a sign in New Zealand, but it’s close enough. However, a lot of the English I see just makes no sense whatsoever. Of course, this is beside the point. A restaurant may have a short slogan in English on its sign (such as “cooking of the pork specialty that we considered beauty and health”) simply to give the place an air of sophistication. A t-shirt will probably have English written on it purely for design purposes rather than to convey a specific message. Even though most Japanese people will have studied some English at school, it seems that the majority of them couldn’t care less what all this English actually means – it’s just there, and it looks nice.

Still, someone has to be writing this stuff, and even if the meaning is irrelevant they’ve got to be getting these words from somewhere. When someone decided to slap “Can you had nallow energy?” across the side of a rubbish bin, what did they think they were writing? The obvious grammatical error aside, what is ‘nallow energy’ and why would a bin be asking if I can had it? I could ask similar questions to people who design t-shirts with phrases like “Classic girls like it oneway,” “Be all you can be! Call your uncle: 080-5933-7270,” and “BWgiggle – power to the people! It’s a fiasco at your back door once again” on them. At first I found all this hilarious; now I’m just immune to it. Still the question remains: how do people come up with this stuff?

I have noticed one pattern: as I mentioned last week, the word ‘fuck’ is immensely popular. I recently saw a guy wearing a t-shirt that said “Keep my way. FUCK. World is mine.” The word ‘fuck’ took up most of the shirt. There is also a popular bar in Osaka called ‘Soul Fucktry,’ which describes almost too well what goes on inside. (On a side note, there is a rail company in Japan called 'Kintetsu', a name that is shortened to ‘KNT!’ on what is perhaps the most offensive logo I have ever seen.) Urges to profane in English aside, I am still unsure where most of these bizarre phrases come from. One day, I will track down these people and find out what is going on inside their heads as they write this crazed, acid-tinged madness. Until then, I’ll just sit back and let the tide of mangled English slowly wash over me. Ahh… I can had feel nice.

Well, another year of Critic has come to a close and I feel I have barely scratched the surface of Japan. This is partly because I had to write six columns before I even got here, due an embarrassing scheduling mix-up (for which I am still seeking compensation from the Japanese government). Still, this might not be the last you hear from me yet – no matter how much you may wish otherwise.