Do you speak Engrish?

This website has pictures
of the use of Engrish in Japan.

Q. What is Engrish? A. Engrish can be simply defined as
the humorous English mistakes that appear in Japanese advertising and product
design

Most of the Engrish found on Engrish.com is not an attempt to
communicate – English is used as a design element in Japanese products and
advertising to give them a modern look and feel (or just to “look cool”). There
is often no attempt to try to get it right, nor do the vast majority of the
Japanese population (= consumers) ever attempt to read the English design
element in question …

Here is text from one of the pictures:

Please Keep chair on position &
Keep table cleaned
after dying.
Thanks for your corporation.

I spent two years stationed in Yokosuka, Japan on the U.S.S. Midway (CV-41) and I well appreciated
the people and culture of Japan. There were many strange juxtapositions of
Japanese and American culture. The first time I went out into Yokosuka it was a
culture shock with almost all of the signs being in kanji and the total alien
feeling of the architecture. Walking along in this environment it was pretty
strange to see a seven foot plastic Colonel Sanders in front of a Kentucky Fried
Chicken restaurant, it just looked so out of place with the rest of the Asian
ambiance.

Most people there were taught English in the schools and had to
have a minimum vocabulary, but they didn’t really get a chance to converse in
it. Normally if you wrote something out and used hand gestures you might be able
to converse a little bit. They also seemed to have a vending machine for every
product. There were machines out in the town that dispensed beer, cheeseburgers,
and cough syrup. At bus stops they had umbrellas available in case it was
raining and there were too many people to fit under the bus shelter. When I saw
this I thought that those umbrellas would have a street life of about five
seconds before someone would have stolen them here in the US. At there rock
concerts people would sit in their chairs and watch without hardly a sound. A
friend of mine and I were walking around one day and we got mooned by a group of
Japanese teenagers in their car, good to see American culture being spread far
and wide. Or is mooning a result of the fallen natures? I just can’t imagine a
group of Roman kids hanging out their posterior from their father’s chariot.

Japanese shipyard workers were used to help keep up the maintenance of the
ship. The U.S.S. Midway was a forward deployed ship so it’s home port was in
Japan and she didn’t go back to the united states (until the ship was
decommissioned). I was amazed at the hard work and dedication that these
shipyard workers performed. They were able to do in a month or two what would
have taken at least five times longer in the US. When a ship I was on was
dry-docked in Portsmouth, Virginia I observed quite the opposite. Some shipyard
workers in the US would urinate and defecate in parts of the ship instead of
finding a working bathroom. Fast food wrappers were left everywhere. The only
way you could tell the difference between an homeless person and a shipyard
worker is that the homeless person would ask you for money. Once in Portsmouth
they built a new aircraft elevator door (which is gigantic on an aircraft
carrier), it was hilarious watching them try to get it into position –
especially since it turned out they made this one inch too tall.

One of the times they were doing an overhaul on the ship, a group of us went
on detachment to Iwakuni to support our ship’s A-6E aircraft avionics out of
avionics vans located at the the Marine Core Air Stations there on the flightline. These were
real Marines uncorrupted by working alongside of us Sailors. The Gunny Sergeant
there soon put us on night check to keep us degenerate sailors from influencing
his Marines (and looking back, I don’t blame him). We rented bikes from the base
there called “benjo bombers.” These were named such probably from the
predilection of drunk Americans crashing these cheap bikes into benjo ditches
(open Japanese sewer ditches). In fact one of our group (surprisingly drunk) did
manage to crash into one of these ditches and loose his glasses, he was treated
with a plethora of shots because of this. On one of our sober jaunts into the
countryside, a family waved us down and invited us in. We were in an area far
away from the base and not frequented by Americans. They had been educated in
the states and wanted a chance to converse in English again. We were introduced
to their grandfather who had fought in W.W.II and were served seaweed covered
rice. It took all my acting expertise to keep my face from reflecting the
disgust of my palette. It was an Oscar deserving performance and I don’t think
our fine hosts ever caught on. They were very nice and we later went out camping
with them.

The trains were another interesting experience in Japan. They employed people
to try to almost shoehorn people in to get as many people on the train as
possible. I am only 5’8 but was almost a giant in this culture. One of the
advantages was that even in a tightly packed train, my head protruded above the
crowd into the stratosphere of the train compartment ensuring a fresher air
supply. While at Iwakuni we visited Hiroshima. You would not have realized the
death and destruction that had occurred with the thriving city that had been
rebuilt everywhere but at the epicenter. Seeing Peace Park and the lone library
that withstood the destruction brought the reality of this history into my
conscience. It is one thing to read about the events and quite another to have
it brought home to you.

I was also able to spend two months at the cushy (at least by Navy and Marine
Corps standards) Kadena, Air
Force Base in Okinawa while I was going to micro-minature repair school
(advanced soldering and circuit repair). I also will never forget my trips into
Tokyo, which has to be seen and experienced to be believed. For the most part
people were very pleasant and courteous to us, except for the infrequent
anti-American demonstrations at the gate of the naval base and the few “Japanese
Only” shops and restaurants. I probably experienced more anti-military
discrimination in Norfolk, Virginia (at least in the pre-Desert storm days of
“Dogs and Sailors keep of the grass” signs).