When attempts at fusion go wrong.. (2)
On Tuesday, I posted a link to Hanzi Smatter, the site dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters in Western culture, highlighting tattoos that don’t say quite what the owner thinks they say.
The counterpoint site is Engrish.com which highlights oddball uses of English - mainly from Japan, where it’s trendy to use Western words as part of a design pattern. Go see for yourself at http://www.engrish.com.
My favourite is this funky use of the lovely-shaped word “Dank” to sell bread ….
Photo: from Engrish.com
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Thu, November 16th, 2006 - Author
Yang-May Ooi - Category
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November 24th, 2006 at 1:11 am
It’s true there is endless amusement to be had in Japan just walking around and observing the slogans people have on their tee shirts and sweat shirts. There was the unfortunate girl I spotted recently who was perhaps somewhat rotund but not really enough to be noticed normally except for the “FATTYPOTAMUS” slogan emblazoned on her chest. Another chap I saw was proudly bearing the catchy little slogan “HAVE YOU EXPERIENCED HIS OXYGEN SHORTAGE LIVE?”. When I lived in Japan I had a vacuum cleaner called a LOVENONON which ran on small wheels so that it moved around behind you pulled by the hose. It even had a little cotton jacket with a cartoon and its name on. I think it was to create the impression of taking a dog for a walk in order to make the hoovering experience more enjoyable. I don’t know where they come from, even if you tried you couldn’t come up with some of these ideas! That said, it’s easy to smirk at all this but a visit to the sauna at my local sports club in London confirms the point made in the earlier blog about how westerners are managing to mangle Chinese and Japanese script in the name of body adornment. Unlike tee shirts, though, those tattoos are not so easy to get rid of.