Bring your own gun.
Bonus points if you hit the pianist with the same bullet.
Seen in Shibuya, Tokyo.
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Engrish
Why does Engrish have such a fascination for us native speakers? Personally I find it a huge source of amusement that in Japan - a nation ostensibly obsessed with learning English - that there's so much "English" visible which is not only wrong, but often hilariously so.
This isn't poking fun at other people's speaking abilities - no doubt I make enough howlers in other languages myself - but at the sheer flood of weird words which wash over you in Japan.
(For a view of the world of linguistic cockups from the other side of the divide, see the Orientalish section)
Bruce Pee is not, as you might have imagined, a kung fu watersports porn actor, but the name of a chain of clothing stores in Japan - here in Harajuku. Worryingly, the chain belongs to a group called Illstore.
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In recent years, due to increasing environmental awareness and improved production methods, Japan has been suffering from a severe shortage of waste. To save Tokyo's garbage collectors from unemployment, the city's ward administrations have set up garbage factories such as this one here in Toshima-ku.
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One of the many advantages of English is that you can just make up a word if you want. Heartful is the classical example, but this real estate development company in the southwestern suburbs of Tokyo has been uniquely creative: "rivovation", as far as I can ascertain, is used nowhere in the known universe outside of this sign (added and now outside of this blog post).
Their website is at http://www.lattrait.co.jp/, but at the time of writing devoid of promising Engrish.
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Surreal poetry from this café/gallery in Tokyo's Shibuya district:
Feasting my eyes on the shinny blue sky.There's floating alone a while cloud.
The twitterings of a lark catching my ear with pleasant sound.
(Spotted in 2002, no idea whether the place is still there)
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A public appeal to the signmakers of Japan: even if you can't run your work past a native speaker, please, please at least check your spelling with a dictionary.
Seen in the centre of Kokura, 2002.
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Not quite sure what letter the flower-type design is meant to represent in this logo, seen in Sapporo in 2004.
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