So this week as I'm turning 30 years old
I thought today while I was down the supermarket, I'd treat myself to a little birthday present
You know, buy myself something really good. And I splashed big on this rather
Exquisite and luxurious hat. I won't lie
it wasn't the stylish design or a hundred yen price tag that led me to buy this how it was the little bit of
Aspirational English text written on the front of the Hat which simply reads "are you excited? Let's adventure special everyday"
You know I read down I thought "yeah, I am excited!"
"Let's adventure special everyday" just saying it out loud makes me feel incredibly motivated and coincidentally
It's a great way to kick off a conversation on tinder or bear with questionable results
But I find the Hat goes very well with my new shirt, which of course just says "has high functionality" together
It's quite the combination isn't it? If there wasn't a global pandemic right now, be out on the streets of Tokyo taking the world by storm
But there is... so that won't be happening. The Hat wasn't the only thing I bought down at the supermarket though
I also bought some lunch. Um, This baguette, or as it's known, in my store, Hmm. Nicestick. Nicedick
I suppose I've got a point who can't honestly say they love the taste of nicestick
Japan has an exciting relationship with the English language on many levels,
particularly when it comes to marketing, because even though English proficiency is pretty rare here. The English language is surprisingly common
I mean
I was pretty shocked when I first moved here and found myself surrounded by my native language, and coming as an English teacher
I thought oh good
maybe I won't need to work so hard because people here are
Immersed in it every single day and that was until I took a closer look and realized it is English
Just not quite as we know it... Wait a minute. That's not Indiana Jones. That's Jindiana Jones
a Smorking-Room why is that Baked Sand. I can't eat that. Rib finger. Moist with me! I'll do no such thing
I quickly learned despite the staggering amount of English here in everyday life
Nobody actually reads it, and the perfect example of this is when I was a teacher
I had a really grumpy student who hated me. He hated everything I stood for
He used to lean on his desk next to a pile of unopened textbooks,
giving me the look of death and all the while upon his desk next to the unopened textbooks
There was a big metallic pencil case written across it in big bold English words was the phrase "Boy. We're happy in every respect"
Happy in every respect. It was brilliant because he definitely wasn't to be honest
I could never work out if he simply didn't understand the meaning of the English in his pencil case, or if he was secretly a
master of irony, you know, heh so
Nah, it's the first one. It's definitely the first one. In the months that followed
I would learned that, there's actually a phrase for this in Japan "Kazari Eigo" literally
Decoration English. Because English in Japan is most commonly used as a form of cheap
decorations and prestige, or value to a product and because so few people here understand it, the companies that
Plaster English all over their products and items rarely bother to check that it makes any sense
By how many times has a boy come up to you and said "Boy. We are happy in every respect"
Now Let's go and have some Baked Sand and and some Rib Fingers and watch Jndiana Jones together
I don't know about youth but I've never had that conversation, and I don't particularly want to... but somebody who studied linguistics for three years
It's quite interesting to approach this from a academic perspective
you know how Japanese thinking is reflected through this non-native speaker English in the rhetoric and the phrases but as a sarcastic
XPat, it's even better because there's funny words. haha, roast sparelibs
To be honest don't want to focus on low-hanging fruit though, on simple spelling mistakes like "roast sparelibs"
I want to focus on those big Japanese English
Marketing slogans that look like real English at first until appear closer and realize something is fundamentally wrong
prepare for rain
Rain drop is a drop of water with the size of more than 0.5 millimeters in diameter and comes down from the sky. MWAHAHAHA
Who knew rain could sound so genuinely terrifying. first off though it's important to point out that in the same way
Japan uses English on premium goods such as this we're just as guilty in the West as well
For example, super dry, which has absolutely no association with Japan. It's a British clothing company, but that nonsensical assortment of Japanese
Kanji characters is enough to make a Japanese person's head crash
Well fun. Then of course
They're the folks to get japanese kanji characters as tattoos without doing any real homework who just pick out of a book and unsurprisingly
It goes spectacularly wrong. What might check this out right got a new Japanese tattoo. Yeah, right. Fantastic
Let's have a look. It says honor and courage eternal. Yes honor and courage eternal. Things I believe in it
Yes, it doesn't actually say that though. It says "Uma ni Akogareru" which literally translates as I long for horses
What
Famously last year ariana grande was guilty of this when she got a tattoo for seven rings her new album
Unaware that those two characters in Japanese are read as "shichi rin" literally a small charcoal grill
Although as someone with a love of barbecue nothing seemed off to me. In fact, I'm still working out
What I want is my first Japanese tattoo and small charcoal grill. Well, it could be just the ticket
But for me the essence of what makes Japanese English marketing so great is it actually sounds almost, correct?
But there's just something fundamentally wrong, something off that makes it a little bit... confusing
For example, there is a beef restaurant in Sendai or on the subject of barbecue
I tend to walk past quite often and often catches my attention because it's got this big red desperate looking sign up front written
entirely in English and it simply says
this is extremity of luxury to bite into chunky meat how juicy and tasty
It's beyond the description. the extremity of luxury
It's a miracle that I've never gone in, but ah, that that lied at the end. It's beyond the description
I love the way they wrote that despite using three whole sentences to describe the very sensation of biting into chunky meat
But it's the classic example. It makes perfect sense. It's just awkward and
confusing a little bit scary to be honest, for example
If your waiter walked over to you and said who wants to bite into this chunky meat. Yes. I think it's time to leave now
Still at least the restaurant made an effort to promote their food in a positive way could have been a whole lot worse like another
restaurant, but I did walk into and
Instantly regretted it when I flipped open the menu to reveal a dish and alarmingly branded as soy sauce reckoning of the cream cheese
Soy sauce reckoning of the cream cheese. How did that go so wrong?
It sounds less like an appetizing dish and more like some kind of torture like waterboarding
But with soy sauce and cream cheese thrown in it's quite common for words like that to put me off
Food in general. Like the other day. I was at the supermarket and I saw some rather delicious looking cookies
I went out to reach them to buy them and then my eye caught the little
Description of them in English on the side the box which said "it's a cookie baked in brown"
Baked in what?
Cookie baked in brown by using enough fruits that fully bathed in the blessing of the Sun too delicious for you
Yes, that's right. Not 1 delicious but 2 delicious for you. So mouth-watering with a cookies baked in brown. What does that even mean?
I've had cookies baked in an oven. I've had cookies out of a microwave, but I've never had a cookie baked in brown
Have you? I've not. for some reason,
I've noticed Japanese marketing loves to
Exaggerate where the fruit has come from like turned through into some sort of magical thing for example here
We've got fruit that's been bathed in the blessings of the Sun. Which to be honest does sound quite good
Would you like some cherries? No, not really
Do you like cherries bathed in the blessings of the Sun? You bet my fucking word?
In a previous video, I've uncovered a box of orange flavored cookies, and that time they weren't simply referred to as oranges
they were branded as
Delicious presents from the sky as if God had stuffed half a dozen oranges into a sack and thrown it through the gates of heaven
Down to the peasants below. Some of the marketing might not go down
So well in the West for other reasons. take this cutting board for instance. cheap convenient and full of assumptions. It is a space-saving
multifunctional cutting board that a housewife thought about
Definitely. It's exactly what a housewife thought about get back in the kitchen with your multifunctional space-saving cutting board and make me my dinner
Housewife!
Ridiculous, but if you really want to go down the rabbit hole of crazy
Japanese-english marketing look no further than everyday household items
Because in Japanese marketing companies like to emphasize how the product will make you feel when you use it. combined that ethos with
Decoration English and it's a recipe for disaster and excellence. For example, here's a range of products
I've bought, and I'd like to take you on a journey through a hypothetical day where you'd use each one of these bizarrely branded products
You start the day by waking up and climbing into the shower to use your favorite brand of shampoo
And you don't even need to use the shampoo to know what it feels like because they've described the entire
sensation on the front of the packaging
"Washing my hair. Just a custom that colors my life. Wrapped in fragrance. Just a small scent that lit a spark."
"Falling in love with it. Before knowing, someone started caressing my head."
"Before knowing someone started caressing my hair?" See, you up until that line. It was going pretty well
Wasn't it? before it started to conjure up images of Bill Cosby?
But of course after having your shower, I donno about you, but
I like to put some cream on my face to get rid of those spots
Keep my pores clean, especially after all those long nights out eating chunky meat and rib fingers and as a guy I like to choose
vegeboy vegebody
cool cute, sexy
macho all of those and more
Whatever you want to be boys have to look smart the cream which gives a smart impression for a business boy
I don't about you, but I do like to give the smart impression for a business boy. That is why I choose vegeboy
Exclusively vegeboy. Preparing to go to work. You start to pack your bag
but all the things you need to have a successful day in my case a
Motivational notebook with a little quote on the front. to fire me up and get me inspired
It says you alone can change your life
No one else can fucking yeah have a really fun day meow-meow-meow meow-meow. Brilliant
That's my motivational cat notebook. And of course, you'll never quite know when you'll need a stapler. So let's take my stapler
this was a confusing purchase for medley and I mean
It's not every day you buy a stapler called stick Kyle. at first
I thought this might be a pen but luckily there is a little bit of text under sticky Kyle that says "is this a pen?"
"No, this is a stapler." Oh, thank God that cleared up any ambiguity surrounding the stapler. sometimes
I wish all products would solve their ambiguously crap packaging with such useful marketing. Is it a teaspoon?
No, it's vegeboy. Think of all the time you'd save down the supermarket
So I've got my bag packed and ready to go, but actually the bag itself comes littered with
Inspirational English quotes, let's see what invaluable insights we can find
For a good life, you need good stuff brilliant. I'd never have thought of that myself words of wisdom to stick on your world
I am happy and enchanted as if I were in a dream and enchanted with beautiful flowers in front of me. aww, that's nice
Isn't it. sounds like the last sentence you'd hear before Someone stuffed an axe through your skull?
What kind of dream are you having? a nightmare.
But I've saved the best till last. I donno about you, but when I give presents to family and friends
I like to put them in a gift bag littered with
insanity
with quotes so bizarre and so obscene they
Overshadow the very gift held within. as I read these quotes out remember somebody in a room actually dreamt these up at some point
So what do we got. "for beautiful hair, let a child run his fingers through it"
What? who felt that was an appropriate thing to stick on a gift bag at time of celebration?
Next. "For a slim figure share your food with the hungry."
Definitely. It's the only way to a slim figure sounds like a quote from a disapproving grandmother who's reckless comments led their grandchild to have
an eating disorder
never throw out anybody a Burglar?
as you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands
What is that. life hacks from Po*nhub? people even more than things have to be restored renewed revived reclaimed and redeemed redeemed
redeemed redeemed
I think that last line confirms why I suspected all along the English on this bag of the dying words of a broken robot
Who just wanted to be loved. or someone who's completely off their rockers. So there you have it
We've been on quite the Odyssey today through Japanese English marketing through the mysteries of Engrish
But what was your favorite quote and would you watch Jndiana Jones? Let me know in the comments below
I still don't know what you Jndiana Jones is it was a magazine
I found. I wish I bought that magazine in hindsight
biggest regret of
2020 so far. and the next time you come to Japan keep an eye out because you never know what gems you might find as
you open a restaurant menu devour some chunky meat or eat a cookie baked in brown
That's all for now though guys as always many thanks for watching. I'll see you next time
I'm off to celebrate what's left of my 30th birthday by eating this delicious
Nice stick and if you want to make my 30th birthday complete
Why not subscribe to the abroad in Japan Channel. statistically apparently half of all regular viewers are subscribed
They just type abroad in Japan into the search box every time. there's an easier way my friends
and Oh
God
Smells absolutely
disgusting. "nicestick"? more like "crapstick" all that build-up for nothing. screw this I'm off to get some
Baked Sand