When I stopped by the konbini for lunch at the start of Spring, I made my cursory glance through the constantly rotating stock of temporary soft drinks to see if anything caught my eye. Something did.
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There’s a fever sweeping Japan, inspiring city officials and police to crack down on the shady black market for a highly regulated industry linked to the sex industry, gambling, and even human trafficking.
You see, since about 1948, it’s been more-or-less illegal to dance after 11 p.m. And now the police, 60 years after the fact, are starting to crack down.
I took a cardboard box full of instant ramen with me to college. Continue reading
The night starts by asking a cab driver to take you to a school. It’s 11 p.m. and you have no business going to a school at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night, so the driver heads toward the school and then discretely stops a few blocks away.
“Why don’t I let you out here?”
The whole thing feels a little shady and suspect, like you’re dealing with yakuza. But the secrecy dissolves when you wander through neighborhood ramen shops and come to a door with a hand-made sign. In bold, magic-markered capital letters surrounded by stars: “This is a GAY BAR.”
I’m not pioneering the amusement potential of “Engrish,” the mind-numbing spawn of English when used solely for decorative purposes. But while reading through the amazing computer-generated Twitter spam of horse e-books, I realized something: The two forms of completely nonsensical English have their own quirks.
So, I’ve made a little test with a theory: People who live in Japan and are accustomed to Japanese English will be able to spot its charms when isolated from the computer-generated poetry of a Spam engine. I suspect those of you who have never been to Japan will have some difficulty.
Enjoy!
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