And this is my theme music as I roll out to face the enemy. Here’s hoping this year is an epic win!

I’m taking the level 2 again after just barely missing the cutoff last year. This time I’m actually feeling pretty confident about it, as last year my familiarity with a lot of the kanji was pretty suspect and I still came close. After a full year of reading manga almost exclusively in Japanese, I think I’m much better prepared, although there’s still always those horrible trick questions with really ambiguous contexts to confuse you.

Once this is over Epic Win will officially be off hiatus, assuming the test and/or Los Angeles traffic doesn’t kill me, so check back later this week for some new postage. I still have a lot of catching up to do for this season of anime, but I have a couple interesting posts cooked up in the meantime.

Ugh, I’d almost forgotten what a pain in the butt it is to cram for exams. Well, good luck my fellow examinees! And, uh…posthumous good luck to those overseas who already took it, I guess.

/salute

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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!

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