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Japanese Jokes

「いろんな情報がいっパイン！」
「もう見てくレッタスか？」

If you haven’t had enough, check the white text in the lower left…

「ご利用果＆菜！」

This poster is full of bad… awful… rotten… terrible… Japanese jokes. Understand them. Analyze their structure. Make worse jokes of your own. Join me. Come to the dark side of Japanese. It is your destiny.

「いろんな情報がいっパイン！」

OK, just to be sure we are all understanding the basics. 「いろんな」means various. It’s probably close enough to say that it is a variation of the word 「色々な」。「情報」simply means “information”. Now, for the bad joke part.

This is a play on words, involving the picture below. Remember, the pineapple is the speaker. To say pineapple in Japanese is パイナップル。Notice it begins with 「パイナ」which if you cut off your pronunciation of the 「ナ」would be 「パイン」, which are the last three letters of the pineapple’s statement. Normally to say “it has a lot of information”, you would say… 「情報がいっぱい」, as in the 「いっぱい」that means “a lot”. By adding an 「ん」on the end… you can say 「情報がいっパイン」.

Why would you want to say that you ask? Because it’s funny. You see… The PINEapple is speaking. 情報がいっパイン！ Get it!? PINE! This is one type of Japanese humor, usually called 親父ギャグ or literally, “old man jokes”.

If you make a pun like this around Japanese people, they will probably say 「さむい〜」(it’s cold!) in response.

「もう見てくレッタスか？」

This one is so bad it hurts. This is so forced, it’s almost difficult to figure out what the original Japanese was supposed to say!

The original Japanese is supposed to say, 「もう見てくれたっすか？」which is the slangy version of,「もう見てくれましたか？」, and means, “did you already see it?” The 「くれました」on the end gives it the sense that the customer seeing it as a favor for the company that created it. Review the 「くれた」「もらった」「あげた」grammar patterns if you forgot this one.

The slang, 「くれたっすか」has been changed to 「くレッタスか？」, because a head of lettuce (レッタス) is saying it…

Geesh.

「ご利用果＆菜！」

This is just ridiculous. You would read this, 「ごりようくだ＆さい」. The original Japanese should be… 「ご利用ください」. This is an extremely common phrase which means “please use it”, as in a service or product that a company or something is providing. See how「ごりようくだ＆さい」kind of sounds like that? But it’s more fun, because 「果」is the kanji in 「果物」that means “fruit”, and 「菜」is the kanji in 「野菜」which means “vegetable”. Pineapple… Lettuce… Fruits and vegetables.

That’s enough of that nonsense.

The Osaka Municipal Transportation Bureau… What a funny bunch of people!

- Harvey

Posted: July 30th, 2007 under Poster Ad.
Comments: none

Terrifying

Ad Text in Japanese:

「テロ警戒にご協力を！」

「不審な人や車、荷物などを見かけたときは、警察署、交番（駐在所）、１１０番もうしくは近くの警察官にお知らせください。」

大阪府警察

Gotta love the flames in the background.

「テロ警戒にご協力を！」

「テロ」is short for「テロイズム」, which is, “terrorism”. It -is- in fact the shorttened form of that work, but the true is, these days you barely ever hear「テロイズム」spelled out. The abbreviation has become commonplace.

「警戒」This is a useful word to know, it means “warning”, or “precaution” or “lookout”. I rarely see it in places other than, official police or fire department things or whatnot… But I see it a lot.

「ご協力」is the honorable form of 協力、which means “cooperate”. As you might imagine, the word 協力 is used liberally in Japanese society. You might see groups of girl scout looking people on the street yelling, 「ご協力よろしくお願いします！」when asking for donations or signatures or what not. “Please cooperate! Please give us a hand!” Is basically what it boils down to. The particle「に」before this, is a directional particle.

So, basically, cooperate with the “terrorism warning” if you will. Go along with what they say, don’t start any trouble, or the dog is gonna bite ya.

「不審な人や車、荷物などを見かけたときは、警察署、交番（駐在所）、１１０番もうしくは近くの警察官にお知らせください。」

Long one!

「不審な人や車、荷物」不審、means “shadey” in my totally unofficial slang translation. However, it is a formal word, and dictionaries will translate it as “doubt, question, distrust, suspicion, strangeness”. Very hard to understand how to use from that… For one example, the North Korean Spy Boat that was sunk and is in Yokohama bay area, is known as a 不審船 in Japanese. The ALC dictionary translates that as “mystery boat” or “suspicious boat”.

So, a 不審な人 is a suspicious person, and a 不審な車 is a suspicious car. 不審な荷物 is suspicious luggage. You might know that the 「や」here, basically means “or” with an inclusive feel. Suspicious people and/or cars (vehicles). 「など」basically means “etc” in English, and just means that other than suspicious people, cars, or luggage, if you see anything else like that… Like you know… A suspicious dog or something… take proper action.

「を見かけたとき」 I have eluded to this already… There’s Japanese for ya, verbs at the end, what can ya do. The verb 「見かける」is to “see”, but more in a “catching sight of”. It’s not like you were looking for this thing, and it’s not as if seeing it by chance was such a bad thing. If you see someone by accident, and it’s slightly negative, you would likely use the form, 「見てしまった」instead. The「とき」at the end of this is “when”. You can make the form, “when something is done” by using the past tense form of the verb, and adding とき。

「警察署、交番（駐在所）」A bunch of nouse for where the police hang out. They even have 交番 KOBAN in Saipan! 駐在所 is actually a word for a “residential police box”. I’m not sure how, if at all this is different than a Koban. I’ll ask around and update if I find out!

「１１０番もうしくは近くの警察官にお知らせください」

１１０ is the direct number for the police in Japan. I belive the 「番」is short for 番号, as in “number”.

「もうしくは」is a semi-formal way to say “or”. Otherways to say “or” include the casual 「か」、as in, ピザかパスタが選べるコース. A course (dinner) where you can chose pizza or pasta. Another way to say “or” is 「あるいは」, which feels just as, if not more formal than もうしくは。

近くの警察官 is “a nearby police officer”. The Kanji, 「官」is used in words for other officials as well. For example, 「裁判官」is a “judge”.

にお知らせください, is the formal way to say, “please report to”. As you probably know, 知る means “to know”, and this is the causative form… So it becomes “to make known”. This form of the verb is used to mean to make an announcement or something.

That was a long one with lots of grammar! Any questions, leave them in the post!

- Harvey

Posted: July 25th, 2007 under Other Signage, Poster Ad.
Comments: none

Trash and Frogs

A wonderful day down by the Yodo river in Osaka.

Oh? What’s this important looking sign?

Why, there’s a sleepy frog on it, and look! He’s sitting on a lily pad!

「ゴミはもちカエル」

「公園利用者の方が心地よく過ごせるようにゴミはすべてお持ち帰りください。」

First let’s look at「ゴミはもちカエル」, or, bad Japanese puns!

「ゴミ」means “trash, waste, rubbish, litter, etc”, and is usually written in hiragana.

「持ち帰る」is how 「もちカエル」is usually written. The verb 「持つ」means to hold, have, or carry, and the verb 「帰る」means to “go back”. Together, 「持ち帰る」means to “carry something back with you”. On this sign, 「帰る」is written in katakana, as 「カエル」, and there is a picture of a sleepy looking frog next to it… As you probably know, in Japanese, 「蛙」is pronounced 「かえる」and means… Frog. So it’s pronounced the same as 「帰る」, which makes it funny.

Bad Japanese jokes are like this. When you hear them the proper response is… 「さむい！」

I’ll break down this next long line for next time!

「公園利用者の方が心地よく過ごせるようにゴミはすべてお持ち帰りください。」

So long for now!

- Harvey

Posted: July 21st, 2007 under Other Signage.
Comments: none

Japanese Beer Song

Malt Beer!

マルツ　マルツ　マルツ！

Enough said about that no? New Malt Beer available. Well, it was new in April…

To make up for the lack of language in this ad, here’s a cultral video bonus.

Japanese 飲み会 on YouTube！

Ah, one thing though. If you were to actually talk about a “Malt Beer” in Japanese I beleive the term is 発砲酒。I’m not a beer connesieur though so please correct me if there is something different about 発泡酒 in general and a malt beer! I think 発泡酒 is a generic malted any kind of alcoholic beverage, but I don’t know of any other drinks that are malted other than beer!

The other day at work, at 6pm on Friday the boss took beers out of the fridge and passed them around the office. They weren’t malt beers though.

- Harvey

Posted: July 17th, 2007 under Poster Ad.
Comments: none

Healthy Drink Green Tea… part 2

Back to finish drinking that tea. Don’t you hat it when you leave a tea bag in the cup too long, and the last sip is so bitter it makes you gag? Or with real green tea, if you wait forever, the tea and the water will separate so that the bottom of your cup looks like the bottom of the ocean? Actually… that looks kind of cool now that I think about it.

Anyway, back to the language.

「毎日ストレッチをしたり、ゆっくりと急須で入れて、お茶の時間を楽しんだり、健やかなあなたの毎日、緑茶のある暮らし。」

「毎日ストレッチをしたり」is not too tricky. 「ストレッチ」 is the English word, “stretch”, and means just what the lady on the poster is doing so eloquently. The end of this section is a sentence pattern that you have probably encountered if you’ve studied Japanese formally, the したり、したり、する。 Pattern. You make the verb past tense informal, and add 「り」 on the end to create a list of things you did or will do.

「ゆっくりと急須で入れて」This one is pretty interesting. First off, 「ゆっくりと」is the same as the 「ゆっくり」 we saw at the beginning of this ad. The 「と」is a particle that comes between these parts of speech and a verb. For example, 「ゆっくりと話」or, as previously mentioned, 「ゆっくりと過ごす」.

「急須」is a word that I did not know before reading this advertisement. 「急須」is simply a Chinese style teapot… But I have no idea where these Kanji came from. Is this 「当て字？」Kanji put together just because of the sound? Or is there meaning behind it? Anyone know? 「で入れて」, is put in. So, slowly put it (pour it) into the teapot. It, assumed to be the green tea.

「お茶の時間を楽しんだり」 Not much to explain here, “enjoy tea time”. The 「だり」on the end continues the list that we started with 「ストレッチをしたり」.

「健やかなあなたの毎日」 We have seen the adjective 「健やかな」before, it is not common in daily conversation… but turns up in things like this often enough. It is a 「な」adjective, so when describing 「あなた」so it includes the 「な」before it. Literally, this section sounds like, “a healthy YOU’s everyday”. So, something like, “your healthy daily life”.

「緑茶のある暮らし」「緑茶」is the world for “green tea”, as I beleive we mentioned earlier.「暮らし」is a word for “life”, with a feeling of, “daily way of life”. It is pretty tricky at first to get your head around the differences between the many ways to say “life” in Japanese ,「命」、「人生」、「生活」、「暮らし」、best way to do it is keep note of the examples that you see (such as this one) and eventually it will all come together. This phrase has put 「のある」after 「緑茶」to express that, this is a “life with green tea”.

That was a long one, but lots of interesting grammar patterns to keep it interesting.

Drink your tea! And stretch in the morning as well…

- Harvey

Posted: July 15th, 2007 under Poster Ad.
Comments: 2

Healthy Drink Green Tea

Ad Text in Japanese:

「ゆっくり、じっくり、健やか毎日『緑茶』」

「毎日ストレッチをしたり、ゆっくりと急須で入れて、お茶の時間を楽しんだり、健やかなあなたの毎、日緑茶のある暮らし。」

I’ll break this one up into two parts as well. I found this poster outside of a green tea shop. The shop is a mom and pop place, so it makes me wonder if they had this poster made up themselves. I haven’t seen it any other place… It’s a pretty modern looking poster for the size of the shop it was in front of. Usually signs in front of mom and pop places look more cheesy… Like that Eel poster we saw a while ago. I guess green tea gives you some design sense as well… Let’s get into it!

「ゆっくり、じっくり、健やか毎日『緑茶』」

「ゆっくり」means “slowly”, and that’s pretty much all there is to it. One thing to note, is that it can be used for speed, as in the speed of a car or the speed of someones speech, but it can also be used to describe for example, a slow lifestyle.

For example, 「ゆっくりと老後を過ごしたい。」Would mean, “I want to live a relaxed (slow) life after I get old.”

「じっくり」These words are never any fun to translate. Breen says, “deliberately; carefully”, ALC says, “critically, good, thoroughly”. My wife’s Canon dictionary says, “thoroughly, closely”, and says that 「じっくり考える」would mean, “to contemplate”. Now, roll those all up into one, and I think you’ll understand this word. I tend to think of it as a way to explain something that you purposely take your time to perform, and kinda let it simmer a bit for pleasure before finishing it off. Know what I mean?

If anyone has any other way of explaining じっくり、please post in the comments!

健やか毎日『緑茶』健やか！We have seen すこやか before on Japanese Ads! Don’t you just love it when that happens? That means we’re learning! The explanation for the healthy 健やか is in the follow up post here.

毎日 as we know is “everyday”, and 緑茶 is literally, “green tea”. Normally after 健やか there usually would be the particle 「な」because it is a Na-adjective. In this advertisement it’s hard to say why it has been removed, but likely it is simply a matter of style and appearance for the ad.

I’m sure green tea is healthy, but there are many unhealthly green tea related products… Like all those Green Tea flavored Japanese Snacks on J-List.

I wonder if there are random tea flavored snacks in China… Or like Chai flavored snacks in India… Do we have Coke flavored candy in the states? Hrmm… Deep thoughts.

Next time, we’ll go through this!

「毎日ストレッチをしたり、ゆっくりと急須で入れて、お茶の時間を楽しんだり、健やかなあなたの毎、日緑茶のある暮らし。」

- Harvey

Posted: July 13th, 2007 under Poster Ad.
Comments: none

Rainbow of Fruit Flavors

Ad Text in Japanese:

Heh. Looks like I get a break!

- Harvey

Posted: July 10th, 2007 under Poster Ad.
Comments: 1

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