And Sometimes Why

When I was working for Silver State Helicopters, there was a young woman working as the administrative assistant for the IT department named Kristin. Kristin had (and presumably still has) a tattoo on the back of her neck of two kanji. She requested the kanji because the shop told her they meant “angel.”

Many Americans seem to be fascinated with the idea of getting something ancient tattooed on themselves, adding history and significance by association with indelibly-marked symbols and ideas. Many people get tribal tattoos from tribes they’ve never met (or that never existed), military symbols from armies of which they’ve never been a part, and writing in languages they don’t speak.

The problem with this of course, is that if you’re not actually in the group with which you’re associating yourself, you can’t really be sure of all the baggage that comes with the symbology- or worse, that the symbols you’ve chosen to mark your skin for life mean something wholly different than what your tattoo artist told you they mean.

Kristin thought she was getting a tattoo of the Japanese kanji for “angel,” and I’m happy to report that she basically got what she paid for. I asked my school’s office manager to look at the photo Kristin kindly let me take of her tattoo, and she said that while the kanji certainly says “angel,” it doesn’t look Japanese, but likely a script form of older Chinese kanji. The modern Japanese print form is on the left.

If you’re interested, the first symbol is 天, often pronounced “ten,” and is the symbol for “heaven” and “sky.” It’s also the first part of the word “tempura.” The second symbol is 使, with many different readings, most of which are a derivation of “messenger” or “envoy.” Thus 天使 means “heaven’s messenger,” or “angel.”

I just finished playing through Portal. (If you’ve played it, you probably figured that out from the title of the post.) It’s a fun game, and certainly deserving of most of the hype it’s received. A friend of mine recently said that it was nice to see a good 3D engine used for something other than a First Person Shooter, and I agree.

It’s a great puzzle game that consistently reminded me of Zelda (Ocarina of Time, specifically). It has a good learning curve right up until the last two levels, each of whose difficulty easily dwarfs all previous levels combined.

Like many good puzzle games, it’s strangely addictive. I get simulator sickness from playing most 3D games, and Portal was no exception. I have a headache and an upset stomach as I write this, in fact. It was a mild effect though, unlike some other games I’ve played. Anyway, my point is that the game was good enough to play through the slight dizziness.

If you’re at all interested in Portal, go play it.

Since there’s no way I’m going to let a whole month go by without a blog post, I thought I’d toss up a quick post about clothes here in Japan. Specifically, clothes that have Engrish on them. There seems to be no market for clothing with correctly written English, as it’s used almost exclusively as a design element rather than a method of conveying meaning. That, combined with the facts that English is “cool” and that the vast majority of Japanese people can only derive a rude meaning from a string of English words, means that there are a lot of Japanese people showing off their “English” (and very often pseudo-American) clothes without knowing what abuses of the English language are actually written on them.

When I see English in Japan, I’m genuinely surprised if it isn’t rife with errors. I couldn’t possibly hope to document it all, but when I have my camera, I try to capture the gems. The first few pictures you see are pictures of my students I took in my classroom. You can’t really read all of them in the scaled down versions, so I typed out the contents. I tried to help as much as I could through punctuation, though it didn’t often help.

	LEFT: Surf riding goodstream, Professing skilled profession RIGHT: Stinson Beach, California: The Wave is Forever
	From left to right: Individual For Pleasure Only Guaranteed to fit better D.O.Daddy 65 Twist frontside [Remainder illegible due to shirt fold] It takes a little more to make a Champion. Champion authentic athletic apparel
	STAYING, you are on the verge of salvation! You are on the verge of salvation! When it is made to revive vividly, ground at a sense beyond the word stands up and appears that shaft line the world.
	LEFT: [New York Yankees logo on polo shirt breast] RIGHT: SAMURAI Japan
	Impregnerade SAMURAI säkerhets-tandstickor safety matches
	LEFT: Wask 22 RIGHT: Pour les enfants hushush Avoir le coeur leger Included just because they’re goofballs.
	Long and [obscured] condition (?) PARADISE for the sake of attaining SUNSET BEACH, surfing least much comes
	The Eastboy go in the future begin to walk. The words that give me hope. A friend in need is a friend indeed. When I was troubled, I encourage it. As for you, how many “friends” are there?
	Engrish isn’t limited to clothing, as this bag proves. I love the American Nutrition Facts label.
	IT’S NEW, Honey sweet. Would you like a NATIONAL BISCUIT? You will be crazy about Rich Flavor! Special Value
	Burger Special
	GLUTTONS Special mega burger
	From left: [top illegible] 1970 GRATEFUL ROSES: It’a [sic] Beautiful In Black Pia angel 08 [upper French obscured] esprit de paris 1998, TRÈS BON!!
	GRATEFUL ROSES: It’a [sic] Beautiful In Black
	I certainly can’t fault my students for wearing clothes with broken English. Here’s what they have to choose from when they go shopping: CRESCENT- Full of energy, Galaxy Grobal [sic] Universe, Starry night, Catch your dream Cleared up, it is fine today. THE SKY CLEARED UP BEAUTIFULLY. The tree leaves glistened after the rain. Lustrous Cherry lips from you WIND PURSUE lack of ability Excellent Clear Sight, Magnificent Scenes I MADE A PROMISE WITH HER ON THURSDAY Artlessness & Fleckle
	Delight smile and friendly competing with each other
	Let me take a moment to give you an example of the “height” of fashion in Matsuyama. Note the “man bag” clipped to a belt loop, embroidered jeans (with bonus sewn-up hole) tucked into cowboy boots, and poofy, bleached “Lion King” hairdo.
	Rock the World with you [the text is from a song of this name] We gotta know we’re on the run I just grab your stuff, and in a minute we’ll be gone We’re gonna pull away like strangers, but soon the world will know How far this kinda love could ever go Remember what I say Baby don’t matter what they do

There’s always more Engrish to be had, so I’m sure I’ll post plenty of it in the future. I need to get some sleep though, so I’m going to pull away like a stranger.