Mon 11 Jun 2007
One of the Nippon 2007 committee just posted a brief English email to the staff mailing list. A message to an large list in Japanese would have started with “???” (that’s a made up name, not the name of the person who posted), giving the name of the originator. I’m not sure why this etiquette exists on Japanese lists. Possibly it dates back to when email systems couldn’t hold kanji/kana characters in headers. Anyway, when writing in English, this staff member translated “???” as “I’m Akira”, which in isolation is a perfectly reasonable translation of the Japanese. Unfortunately, in context, it’s very odd English. I had to manfully resist the temptation to reply with one or all of::
“I’m Spartacus”
“I’m Sparkey Tickets”
“I’m Brian, and so’s my wife.”
Bonus points (scored by the lovely Samantha) to anyone who can name all three references.
This brings me to the point of this post. One of the downsides of living in Japan, for an Englishman like me, is the lack of opportunity to make puns and other word play jokes. On the odd occasion when I can’t resist doing so, I’ve always got to explain it. If you have to explain it, it’s not funny. My Japanese isn’t nearly good enough to make Japanese puns, either. <Sigh>
July 25th, 2007 at 16:32
– Spartacus and Life of Brian are easy references. As for the third, I’m sorry I haven’t a clue.
I can sympathise with your cultural frustration. Having been in Tokyo for ten years now I can advise that this lack may not diminish in time.
Try not to feel like you’re being stalked on the internet, but I came here by following your recent post at TheRegister, where you echoed my comments about Docomo. You may not find it so easy to Google me. Partly, because I am somewhat concerned about privacy on the net, but mostly because so far I have not done that much worth shouting about.
March 31st, 2008 at 08:06
I ran across this little gem parked at the back of the latest edition of the Guardian Weekly.
Q. Where do policemen live?
A. Lesby Avenue of course.
It brightened my otherwise gloomy Sunday morning immeasurably.
I like your site – I will visit again.