On Vacation

Dear Readers,

Starting on Dec. 17th, I will be traveling through Oregon and California for three weeks.

Thanks to the great folks at Gmail for hooking me up with Gmail Mobile, so if anyone has any tips about interesting places to visit, please feel free to email me.

In the meantime, please entertain yourselves with this Japanese etiquette guide about how to properly order and consume sushi.

Happy Holidays


-tian

"Ding Dong"

When I saw this photo, the first two questions popped into my mind are:

1. Is the witch dead?

2. Are the fries done?

The four-character phrase (circled in red) on this young man's left forearm is the literal translation that means "the sound of ding-dong".

Arbor Snowboard - "Push"

http://www.arborsports.com/06/snowboards/html/push_06.html

In the promotional pamphlet for "Push" from Arbor Snowboards, the characters circled in red are mirrored. It could be an "artistic" thing.



http://www.arborsports.com/06/snowboards/html/push_06_lrg.html

If the phrase on the snowboard is translated back into English one character per word, 女表達 would mean "female expression", but it is contextually incorrect and sounds terrible.

Since this snowboard caters to female riders, why not just call it "female expression" instead of "Push"? Or use jumbled "Americanese" that translates to "female expression"?


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Bewitch Hero Energy

http://flickr.com/photos/shadowbox/25270163/

Many tattoo shops prohibit any photographs to be taken in their shops. I never really asked why but have always assumed it has something to do with copyrights. It always makes me cringe whenever I see template displays in tattoo shops with incorrect translation and wrongly written characters.

Thanks to Flickr user “Shadowbox”, I found the photo shown above.

The character 化 with caption “to bewitch” is not necessarily correct. The Japanese 化かす does have “to bewitch” as one of its meanings, but the character 化 by itself only means “to change” or “to convert”, and “reaction” in Chemistry. 蠱惑 is often used to describe “bewitch”.

The last character in “hero” appeared to be mirrored. The three characters 主人公 only mean “main character”. If you ever stepped foot in a DVD store, you will know “hero” is 英雄, there is even a movie with the same title was made starring Jet Li.

The “energy” character 活 means “to survive” or “to exist”. Usually 氣 is used to represent “energy” in terms of “Chi” or “Qi”, and 能 is used to represent physical energy.


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Manzo's Tattoo

http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=789394

Reader Sam emailed me the photo shown above.

As one commenter has already mentioned in the original forum, these are random characters with two of them done incorrectly.


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"Friendless"

http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A51202/high/bmepb175130.jpg

This young man probably did not have a Chinese-speaking friend to verify the tattoo for him.

友 (friend) is missing a horizontal stroke.


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"Hair Splitting"

http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A51202/high/bmepb174881.jpg

The circled character 亳 is the name of district in Anhui, old captial of Yin.

In one of my previous postings, the owner with the same character tattoo claimed it meant "carpe diem", which is completely wrong.

Or the character should have been 毫 (fine hair; measure of length; 1/1000).


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