Engrish of Great Favorite? Is Mine Too!
Posted by 0rion on October 30th, 2007 - 10:30 pm
That’s right, Ghetto Happy Dining…and
of course it’s a really posh restaurant.
As a nation, Japan is absolutely fascinated with the English language. They give their products English names to make them sound foreign and exotic, they brand them using Roman letters to give them that distinctive trendy look, and they wear T-shirts with phrases that look as though they were produced by having a blindfolded person point to a series random words in a dictionary.
It wasn’t that long ago that learning a foreign language was looked upon with a great deal of suspicion. During Japan’s more isolationist days, anyone who spoke English too well was viewed as un-Japanese, something of a renegade. Now that the Japanese have really opened up to the west, however, they seem determined to make up for lost time by using and abusing the language in every way conceivably possible.
If you’ve ever traveled in Japan, you have no doubt seen the way English is plastered all over signs, advertisements, and T-shirts. The free-spirited brazenness with which it is used, unhindered by such petty things as “grammar”, makes linguists and English teachers around the world cringe in dismay, but it also provides plenty of entertainment for gaijin like myself.
Below is a sampling of a few of the things I ran into during my time in Japan that made me laugh.
Gentile. No Jews allowed.
A local Italian restaurant in Musashi Koganei a couple stops down the Chuo line from where I lived.
I guess they serve a lot of pork. 
Well, Italians are gentiles for the most part, so I’d have to agree with that.
Racipe for Happiness.
Spotted in Namba shopping district in Osaka.
.
.
I wonder if Martha Stewart knows about this particular racipe…
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Taco Rice.
It so junky and healthy!
Taco rice is actually a pretty popular dish in Japan. Many Japanese people eat it thinking they’re enjoying fine traditional Mexican cuisine. To be fair, though, it is quite tasty, kind of like a taco salad, but with rice instead of tortilla chips.
Paradoxical salad dishes are a staple food item among Japanese restaurants, it seems.
Lemon Gas.
The Japanese are really doing wonders with biofuels these days, or so I hear.
I imagine it smells a lot better than diesel, too.
I’m more partial to lime gas, personally, but that’s just me.
.
.
Gotta watch out for those suspicious unclaimed persons.
Trains in Japan always have wonderfully humorous warning signs, often accompanied by cute anime style illustrations.
The sign on the bottom with the cat says “Watch out for the door!”
Do cats count as unclaimed objects then?
.
.
This kind of stuff provides endless amusement for foreigners, who can frequently be seen pointing and laughing while the Japanese people stand around wondering what’s so funny.
I have plenty more pictures like this, I was just too lazy to go through my massive photo archive and cull the interesting ones. At some point later on we’ll put together another Engrish post showing off a few of the hilarious T-shirts we’ve seen.
Obligation being next time of more Engrish enjoyment togetherness please! 
Whats this, taking the Outpost Nine baton ?
Good job.
Epic Win’s Engrish it is most enjoy of humor and pictorial.
LOL….yea, I’ve always found it funny that the Japanese find western things “cool”, when us actually living here in the states are just like “whatev”. You could almost say the same thing about ourselves though. Man….that Taco Rice has to be the best.
Taco rice is almost as good as spaghetti and meatballs rice, which is junky, healthy, and ballzy. It’s the new deluxe.
@ Karry
Hah, although I have had a number of bizarre and humorous experiences teaching English in Japan, it’s nothing compared to Azrael’s hilarity.
I do enjoy sharing the fun times I had in Japan, however, so you can expect to see plenty more like this.
@ DS
It is our delightful of your pleasure experience!
@ Totali
Yeah, I’m pretty partial to Taco Rice myself.
@ super rats
If I saw a sign like that, I would go into the store and offer them money to let me take it home.
I guess I am a fan of Engrish myself, as long as it is not offensive. Some further weirdness I noticed in your photos:
- I just noticed that on top of and after the “A Racipe for Happiness” line, there is some short French (grammatically correct if you don’t count the slang) sentence. “Une nana cool” exactly means “A cool gurl”.
Why a cool girl? Don’t ask me.
- Gentile, since 2000. Seven or eight years of excellence (Desho? Desho?) is worth mentioning for a restaurant.
- You shouldn’t laugh about unclaimed persons. What about lost kids? * half grin*
Well, enough critics and other evil thoughts for tonight.
Belated Happy Halloween to everyone!
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