Let's find many happiness

ah...the joy of finding happiness from a memorizing diary :-)

The one time we were lucky enough to visit Tokyo, Brian and I went to Sensoji temple and had our fortunes told (I remember it involved drawing a chopstick with a kanji character on it out of a drum). Brian's fortune was couched in similar English but, rather than promising him good things, it suggested that every possible misfortune in life was about to come his way.

I'm afraid to say, I laughed til I cried!

Lina, I hope it doesn't memorize too much bittersweet stuff though.

Marsha, you've been to Japan? The fortune thing is called an o-mikuji, quite rare to find them in English but the Sensoji is a major tourist attraction so it's nice they made the effort. However, I wouldn't count it as true Engrish, because it actually serves its purpose (communicating something to English speakers), rather than being gratuitous decorative writing doing irrepairable damage to the linguistic skills of the myriads of English learners here. If you see what I mean.

Yes, we had a holiday there about 9 years ago, while my brother-in-law was working in Tokyo (for Nokia). We loved every minute and still do the "Of course, in Japan x is common/would never happen/people think nothing of y...etc". Like we would know.

Is Japan inspiring you to hand-write your first novel? Or perhaps you're going to pen(cil) a bit of poetry? When's sakura time? That should inspire you. (Just google-imaged sakura. Didn't get nearly as much cherry blossom as I was bargaining for.)

Sakura-blossom season is April-ish, subject to global warming. Try looking for "hanami" instead of "sakura", which is a much-used and abused word. Dunno about the novel, but come to think of it all the money I've earned (not a lot) from writing has been in Japan.

Abused, you mean, because 'sakura' also happens to mean soft-porn? That's what my image-search brought up.

Thought that might have been the case. The word has a certain porn association, though it is perfectly innocuous and used for all sorts of things, there even used to be a Sakura Bank.

Would abused include having the traditional "Sakura" song slotted into an early Bon Jovi track called Tokyo Road?

Ooh, can someone sing me the Sakura song? I think I learnt it when I was a nipper - boom boom, geddit - and want to have a Proustian moment. Hmm, I don't read music. But someone, somehow, sing to me. Sing to me.

Someone just sang a sakura song on TV.

The excitement is building.