{"id":8513,"date":"2003-01-11T23:58:36","date_gmt":"2003-01-12T04:58:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/2003\/01\/11\/do-you-speak-engrish\/"},"modified":"2003-01-11T23:58:36","modified_gmt":"2003-01-12T04:58:36","slug":"do-you-speak-engrish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2003\/01\/do-you-speak-engrish\/","title":{"rendered":"Do you speak Engrish?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This website<\/a> has pictures
\nof the use of Engrish in Japan.<\/p>\n

Q. What is Engrish? A. Engrish can be simply defined as
\nthe humorous English mistakes that appear in Japanese advertising and product
\ndesign<\/p>\n

Most of the Engrish found on Engrish.com is not an attempt to
\ncommunicate – English is used as a design element in Japanese products and
\nadvertising to give them a modern look and feel (or just to “look cool”). There
\nis often no attempt to try to get it right, nor do the vast majority of the
\nJapanese population (= consumers) ever attempt to read the English design
\nelement in question …<\/font><\/p>\n

Here is text from one of the pictures:<\/p>\n

Please Keep chair on position &
Keep table cleaned
\nafter dying.
Thanks for your corporation.<\/font><\/p>\n

I spent two years stationed in Yokosuka, Japan on the U.S.S. Midway (CV-41)<\/a> and I well appreciated
\nthe people and culture of Japan. There were many strange juxtapositions of
\nJapanese and American culture. The first time I went out into Yokosuka it was a
\nculture shock with almost all of the signs being in kanji and the total alien
\nfeeling of the architecture. Walking along in this environment it was pretty
\nstrange to see a seven foot plastic Colonel Sanders in front of a Kentucky Fried
\nChicken restaurant, it just looked so out of place with the rest of the Asian
\nambiance.<\/p>\n

Most people there were taught English in the schools and had to
\nhave a minimum vocabulary, but they didn’t really get a chance to converse in
\nit. Normally if you wrote something out and used hand gestures you might be able
\nto converse a little bit. They also seemed to have a vending machine for every
\nproduct. There were machines out in the town that dispensed beer, cheeseburgers,
\nand cough syrup. At bus stops they had umbrellas available in case it was
\nraining and there were too many people to fit under the bus shelter. When I saw
\nthis I thought that those umbrellas would have a street life of about five
\nseconds before someone would have stolen them here in the US. At there rock
\nconcerts people would sit in their chairs and watch without hardly a sound. A
\nfriend of mine and I were walking around one day and we got mooned by a group of
\nJapanese teenagers in their car, good to see American culture being spread far
\nand wide. Or is mooning a result of the fallen natures? I just can’t imagine a
\ngroup of Roman kids hanging out their posterior from their father’s chariot.<\/p>\n

Japanese shipyard workers were used to help keep up the maintenance of the
\nship. The U.S.S. Midway was a forward deployed ship so it’s home port was in
\nJapan and she didn’t go back to the united states (until the ship was
\ndecommissioned). I was amazed at the hard work and dedication that these
\nshipyard workers performed. They were able to do in a month or two what would
\nhave taken at least five times longer in the US. When a ship I was on was
\ndry-docked in Portsmouth, Virginia I observed quite the opposite. Some shipyard
\nworkers in the US would urinate and defecate in parts of the ship instead of
\nfinding a working bathroom. Fast food wrappers were left everywhere. The only
\nway you could tell the difference between an homeless person and a shipyard
\nworker is that the homeless person would ask you for money. Once in Portsmouth
\nthey built a new aircraft elevator door (which is gigantic on an aircraft
\ncarrier), it was hilarious watching them try to get it into position –
\nespecially since it turned out they made this one inch too tall.<\/p>\n

One of the times they were doing an overhaul on the ship, a group of us went
\non detachment to Iwakuni to support our ship’s A-6E aircraft avionics out of
\navionics vans located at the the Marine Core Air Stations<\/a> there on the flightline. These were
\nreal Marines uncorrupted by working alongside of us Sailors. The Gunny Sergeant
\nthere soon put us on night check to keep us degenerate sailors from influencing
\nhis Marines (and looking back, I don’t blame him). We rented bikes from the base
\nthere called “benjo bombers<\/a>.” These were named such probably from the
\npredilection of drunk Americans crashing these cheap bikes into benjo ditches
\n(open Japanese sewer ditches). In fact one of our group (surprisingly drunk) did
\nmanage to crash into one of these ditches and loose his glasses, he was treated
\nwith a plethora of shots because of this. On one of our sober jaunts into the
\ncountryside, a family waved us down and invited us in. We were in an area far
\naway from the base and not frequented by Americans. They had been educated in
\nthe states and wanted a chance to converse in English again. We were introduced
\nto their grandfather who had fought in W.W.II and were served seaweed covered
\nrice. It took all my acting expertise to keep my face from reflecting the
\ndisgust of my palette. It was an Oscar deserving performance and I don’t think
\nour fine hosts ever caught on. They were very nice and we later went out camping
\nwith them.<\/p>\n

The trains were another interesting experience in Japan. They employed people
\nto try to almost shoehorn people in to get as many people on the train as
\npossible. I am only 5’8 but was almost a giant in this culture. One of the
\nadvantages was that even in a tightly packed train, my head protruded above the
\ncrowd into the stratosphere of the train compartment ensuring a fresher air
\nsupply. While at Iwakuni we visited Hiroshima. You would not have realized the
\ndeath and destruction that had occurred with the thriving city that had been
\nrebuilt everywhere but at the epicenter. Seeing Peace Park and the lone library
\nthat withstood the destruction brought the reality of this history into my
\nconscience. It is one thing to read about the events and quite another to have
\nit brought home to you.<\/p>\n

I was also able to spend two months at the cushy (at least by Navy and Marine
\nCorps standards) Kadena, Air
\nForce Base<\/a> in Okinawa while I was going to micro-minature repair school
\n(advanced soldering and circuit repair). I also will never forget my trips into
\nTokyo, which has to be seen and experienced to be believed. For the most part
\npeople were very pleasant and courteous to us, except for the infrequent
\nanti-American demonstrations at the gate of the naval base and the few “Japanese
\nOnly” shops and restaurants. I probably experienced more anti-military
\ndiscrimination in Norfolk, Virginia (at least in the pre-Desert storm days of
\n“Dogs and Sailors keep of the grass” signs).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This website has pictures of the use of Engrish in Japan. Q. What is Engrish? A. Engrish can be simply defined as the humorous English mistakes that appear in Japanese…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8513\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}