Ocean, You Meet Engrish

Now that we’re back from Spring Break, it’s time to address a less than pleasant topic--midterms… So, I’ve included an extra post in which I can reminisce my spring break, discuss an aspect of Japanese culture, and avoid studying for those Japanese exams all in one go (yes, I know I’m horrible). It’s too late to count this as my “spring break post” but I thought I’d throw it in anyway to have a temporary (and fun!) distraction.

Found on the front page of the English version of the Kaiyukan aquarium information pamphlet. I ended up staying in the Kansai region over the break, so one of the things I did was go to the aquarium. The entire pamphlet features absolutely fantastic engrish, including “Please enjoy playful sea otters being popular among children,” and “Since large amount of plankton arise, schools of fish swim in this area to look for their foods.”

I want a tasty life. This store has branches all around the Kansai region and they sell all sorts of trendy stuff, from clothing to plants to dishes, to objects that would be in the “home” department of most US department stores. They have a pretty good advertising campaign going, I mean, who wouldn't want a tasty life?

A typical engrish shirt. Engrish is fashionable in Japan, much like kanji is fashionable in the US. I’d like to note that I’m not here to make fun of Japan for their bad English; after all, English is a very hard language to learn and I really have no right to talk since my own English grammar can be just as bad and my Japanese could use some work. The point is that in Japan, English is fashionable to the point where it’s not so much the meaning of the words that matters but the fact that English is on the item in question at all. And in all honesty, our kanji-fied clothing is usually just a whole bunch of pretty kanji slapped together with no consideration to the kanji's real meaning anyway, and what the Japanese are doing with English is no different. The only difference is that in Japan, english as fashion has expanded outside of clothing and onto other objects as well, such as information pamphlets, home decor, and store mottos.