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Bad English
 If you don’t count the two 16-year-olds, I have only made one child cry since I came to Japan.
I caused the kid to burst into tears last summer. He was on a train with his family and was wearing a T-shirt that spelled out “North Carolina” in red, white and blue letters. Thinking he had taken a trip to the Outer Banks or maybe had a relative living in Charlotte, I jumped up, excitedly pointed at his 5-year-old chest, and announced proudly, “That is where I am from!”
His mom and dad were shocked into silence, and he burst into tears. I am sure I would have cried too if some big gaijin (foreigner) pointed at me and rambled on in a strange language. I have since learned that the writing on a person’s shirt does not tell you anything about them.
English writing is everywhere in Japan, but it is rarely useful. You might expect to see signs like “Men Only” or “Do Not Push This Button,” but unfortunately that is not the case. Instead, English letters are printed willy-nilly on clothes, hats, backpacks, billboards, cars, food wrappers and appliances. The words are often not actual English, but are random combinations of the alphabet. For instance, there is a beauty salon in my town called “Apeish Volkeno” and a restaurant chain called “Unmarble.”
Spelling errors are sometimes the source of bad English, but your computer spell checker won’t catch these mistakes. For example, there is a bar here that serves “Beer and Cook tails.” My grocery store stocks a fruit-flavored candy called “Painapple” and a sign in the doctor’s office cheerfully announces “Good Mourning!”
Even if words are spelled right, it seems that grammar is a significant problem for clothing and appliance manufacturers in Japan. I recently saw a T-shirt with a picture of an elephant that reads “A barking elekids seldom bites.” The bottom of my frying pan says “Good taste and happy times: tasting the morning wine following molded Cotswold Hills. Simple Brunch!” And at the drug store you can buy a bottle of lotion that claims to be “facial body remover.” Ouch.
I recently saw a man wearing a sweater that read “Dogs lives don’t have to have meaning.” Sure, the grammar was accurate on this one, but I couldn’t be sure if he was trying to be ironic, political, existential, or just picked it up in the discount bin of the Japanese version of Wal-Mart.
Remembering the time I made the kid cry, I resisted the urge to get into a philosophical discussion with him.
When I return to North Carolina and see Japanese writing on someone’s T-shirt, I won’t ask them if they have been to Japan. After all, we never know what we are wearing.
(Editor’s Note: Betsy Herzog of Cullowhee, a 2005 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is spending a year teaching English in a Japanese high school. The Herald will feature columns by Herzog through July, when she returns to the United States for graduate school.)
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