Blake and Deborah in Hawaii: The Language Barrier

Japanese is a complicated language – particularly in its written form. Three different alphabets (or character sets, more precisely) are used: kanji, characters of Chinese origin; and two home-grown syllabic scripts called hiragana and katakana (together called kana). The Latin letters and Arabic numbers we're familiar with are also sometimes thrown into the mix. Sometimes Japanese is written western style with horizontal rows read left to right and top to bottom. Sometimes it is written in traditional Japanese style with vertical rows read top to bottom and right to left. Wow, huh?

But the language barrier has been much less than I anticipated on this trip. Deborah has noticed a big improvement since she was here 18 years ago in the existence of English translations on, for instance, street signs at major intersections. When we take a train or bus the station/stop announcements are displayed in English as well as Japanese. Ticket vending machines often have an English Guidance button. ATMs always do (although not all work with international cards). A lot of the temples, gardens and other attractions have English language brochures. Some restaurants have English menus, if not the equally useful displays or pictures of food.

It also helps that this is a very efficient, well organized society that is easy to navigate, and that the Japanese people are very kind and helpful to foreigners. They take one look at us and have absolutely no expectation that we will speak a word of Japanese, and so will use what little English they have, if any, in combination with whatever pointing and pantomiming is necessary to get the point across.

I feel a bit guilty at how lazy I've been about learning a few Japanese words, especially since I went to the trouble to buy a couple of Japanese phrase books, which I've since hardly opened. Mostly we just say konnichiwa (hello) and arigato (thank you), with the occasional kudasai (please), hai (yes), and sayonara (goodbye) thrown in. I also know how to say toyu (kerosene) and ippai no (full) when I visit the gas station to fill up the container for our heater back at the house. It's not always elegant, but somehow we always manage to be understood.

It's really interesting how the Japanese have adopted some European words, especially English ones in recent decades. So you have “resoturan” for restaurant, “intaanetto” for internet, and “basukettobooru” for basketball. They also use unaltered English (or French or Italian) words, particularly in business names. This is particularly common in eating establishments, beauty salons (or saloons, as they are sometimes called), and clothing shops. The use of English words is often awkward, however, and ends up sounding at least odd if not absolutely perplexing. Sometimes they are so incongruous or nonsensical as to be downright hilarious. It's probably the same for us back home when we buy plaques or tee shirts with Japanese or Chinese characters on them that we think say "Peace" or "Love" but actually say "cabbage."

Here are some examples of creative uses of the English language we've come across in Japan:

The wording for this one is a bit odd, but at least we get the idea that they do facials.

A gourmet magazine called "Colon"

Do I really want to drink something called "The Pungency"?

Japanese sentence structure is a bit different and doesn't always get properly reordered for English.

Clothing store. This just feels like an incomplete sentence.

Hey, at least this clothing store isn't called "Below Average".

I'm not even sure if they only sell women's clothing here.

Not a dentist office - a supermarket.

A hair salon - apparently for pretentious people who used to be attractive.

That's Tommy Lee Jones. If you saw the film "Lost in Translation" you know about American celebrities doing commercial endorsements in Japan. We also saw a whiskey commercial on television featuring Leonardo di Caprio.