Tales from the English Trenches
Warning: The following contains mild profanity. If this isn't your cup of tea, try the other Japan stories.
If you are a foreigner working in Japan, chances are your job has to do with English: Teaching it, writing it, proofing it, or being able to speak it and Japanese fluently. No doubt you've seen the horror that is Japanese English copywriting in your surroundings: on ads and t-shirts, on products and in your corporate memos. There is even an affectionate term for it now: Engrish, and there are many sites dedicated to mangled English in Japan. Foremost, which I highly recommend, is Engrish.com. When I found it over a year ago, I laughed until the tears came. Besides the regular standbys: "For Beautiful Human Life" and "Mandom" are some truly funny photos and commentary. Pay the site a visit - it rises above the commonplace.Teaching English: I'm sure the Eikaiwa teachers out there have plenty of tales from the trenches, but the one that sticks out foremost in my mind was an intermediate class I taught at a high-tech company in Shinagawa. I was using a pictorial storyboard where a policeman shows a bloodhound a criminal's shoe, and the dog takes him to a shoe store. To start discussion, the text question began: "What does the policeman think of the dog?"
One of my students raised his hand and said, "The policeman is saying, "That dog is a god-dammit."
Pause. I stood there, wheels turning furiously. Should I be discussing profanities in class? The other students were leaning forward, eyes a little too bright for eight o' clock in the morning.
Oh heck, why not? It's nice to see them paying attention for a change.
"Um, no, that doesn't really work. 'God-dammit' is an expletive--something you say by itself. You need a noun here, like, "I think the dog is an idiot." Or if you want to use the profanity, it can be used as an adjective: 'I think the dog is a god-damned idiot.' Uh... let's discuss this in the after-class session."
The student showed up for that session, and I swear, that was the most attentive I've ever seen him. And several other students showed up with similar questions: how to party with Americans at a business meeting and keep up that sterling level of swearing that we're so proud of. And for me, there was the quandary: the question of teaching profanities versus the chance to see the lights go on behind their eyes. Indeed, the most successful classes I had involved little unauthorized snippets on (clean) American slang. there was also that profanities aren't exempt from grammatical rules; something that hadn't occurred to me before.
Why are we so hesitant to teach profanities when they're such a prodigious part of our speech? Take the F-word away, and I think some Hollywood actors and rock musicians would be rendered mute. We believe it's something we shouldn't use or teach, yet we use it and use it. Why keep up the pretense? Besides, the first words you usually remember in a foreign language are the dirty ones.
What I learned in Japanese advertising: So many gaijin land on this island thinking, "Look at all the mangled English on the signs and so forth. Well, not after I'm done with them!" These people are in for a big disappointment. The truth of the matter is, the Japanese have taken English and made it their own.When I joined Kyodo Advertising in 1990, I was often called upon to check Engrish slogans. Someone would plop a horribly mangled sentence in front of me for proofreading, and I would look helplessly at the person, unsure of exactly where to begin. Then the person would ask me, "Are there any dirty meanings in here?"
See, it doesn't matter if a copyline is grammatically mangled. The words are strung together for aesthetics only. For feel. If "SLEDGE HAMMER YELLOW CORN" (as seen on jackets and bags in the nineties) sounds cool, why not use it in the design? Sometimes, Engrish became its own Japanese code: "FOR YOUR HOME LIFE" involved stuff you'd buy for the house; "FOR YOUR CAR LIFE" involved automotive accessories. So the only important thing was that the slogans have no intentional double meanings that would cause a foreigner to recoil in horror or double over laughing. In that regard, I had to tell them that "pussy" no longer means "cat" in English, so forget using that word. It's a shame nobody told them about the word, "woody." Or the word "bitch," before it became a prominent label in Japanese skatewear and featured a symbol of a male figure holding a gun to a female figure's head. Not good at all.
For the most part, I came to understand the motives behind Engrish, and I guess you can call me jaded, but it no longer even merited a reaction. However, when it came to books, pamplets and other materials intended for foreigners, that's when I took control. This wasn't easy sometimes, as the boss wanted to argue grammatical semantics in favor of something that sounded just stupid. I swear, sometimes I think he read a thesaurus every night before bed. Countless times I wanted to retort, "Because I'm the native speaker, that's why!" But that doesn't quite work in the business world.
One afternoon, while returning to the train station from a class in Funabashi, I found myself following a tough-looking gang of kids. All wore identical greased ducktail hairdoes and identical satin jackets. The backs of these jackets bore the bird head from the Thrush Mufflers logo and the words, "THE WILD PECKERS." I had the hardest (sorry) time stifling my giggles as I followed these guys to the station. My Favorite Engrish
My favorite Engrish beverages, good for amusement factor: Post Water (a sports drink), Pocari Sweat (a classic sports drink), Right Guard (in a camouflage can--drink it or pour it on your armpits?) Air (hey! A spend a hundred yen on a can of air!), and the ever-classic Calpis Water. Oh, speaking of drinks, has anyone else noticed that the popular energy drink Red Bull looks and tastes almost exactly like Oronomin C?
Spotted in 1995 on my way to the train station in Ofuna: a young woman wearing a t-shirt that said, "TRUE LOVE IS GREAT, BUT NOT AS GOOD AS A WANK." Wonder if she picked that one up as a souvenir of Australia?
Spotted on a truck that made deliveries to the Sunday's Sun family restaurant beside the Sega building where I worked: "Vegetable Communication." For the longest time, I wondered what vegetables might have to say to each other: They just got Hank, and I think I'm destined for a carrot-and-onion tempura--aaa! Here comes the knife! Go with God, buddy!"
This one borders on urban legend, but I swear that I saw it. To make personal computers more approachable in the nineties, many computer companies used cute mascots. Some companies used characters from popular cartoons, and National Panasonic decided, for their landmark PC, to use Woody Woodpecker as their mascot. Their ad campaign involved posters and a large billboard, which I saw in Ofuna, with the slogan, "TOUCH WOODY." I heard that the American branch of Panasonic sent some people over, and when they saw the signs... well, the ads disappeared a week later.
This one is said to be an urban legend: I heard that the person in charge of one of the main department store windows in Ginza was ordered to create a tableau depicting the meaning of Christmas. Since Christmas in Japan is strictly a commercial holiday, the poor guy had to do some searching. Later, foreigners were flabbergasted to see the resulting display: Santa Claus crucified on a cross, surrounded by presents. According to Snopes.com, this one is an urban legend. However, their mention of Colonel Sanders statues dressed up as Santa Claus to hawk their fried chicken is true. Other Cultural Goofs
This one isn't: The Takashimaya in Setagaya Ward at Futako-Tamagawa-en caused quite a stir one spring when their store window displays featured some hideously caricatured black mannequins. With their oversized lips and monstrous features, they'd clearly overstepped the line between funny and offensive. All these figures needed were watermelons to be complete. I was told a number of African American and African groups raised enough hell to have the display taken down.
I often wondered why Japanese and Chinese folks never took advantage of their kanji and foisted them on unsuspecting gaijin. Especially these days, where touchy-feeling garden accessories with the Chinese characters for "peace," "love" and "friendship" are selling like hotcakes. In Asakusa, where the shops on the Hanamichi leading to Sensoji sold the tackiest of tourist merchandise, I saw t-shirts and hachimaki with kanji slogans like "Kamikaze" and "Ichiban" and "Nihon," but nothing really interesting, like "The person wearing this t-shirt can't read what's on it, but thought the characters looked cool." In a Tokyu Hands hobby store I found a t-shirt that said, in Japanese, "I want to jump on your chest." Ohh-kay. Role Reversal in the US
At a recent San Diego Comic Con, however, I've noticed that otaku have taken matters into their own hands: I found t-shirts that said "otaku" in katakana as well as shirts that said, "Proud to be a filthy pervert." The problem is, half the fun is in realizing that the wearer of the shirt is unaware of its meaning. In America, you know they're just doing it on purpose.
However, if you're proud to be an otaku, you can find t-shirts, pop-culture goods, fetish items and Japanese snacks at jlist.com
All Japan stories (c) Wendy Dinsmore 2004.