Weird English and weirdly shaped ice cream

There is a series of ice cream called Pino that come in boxes of six round ice cream blobs covered in chocolate. The most common is vanilla ice cream in chocolate. There are many variations with berry flavors, coffee flavor, caramel coating, or whatnot. They also have heart shaped and star shaped items in some boxes. I found one heart and one star recently. In some boxes you can find up to six weirdly shaped ones. But that is apparently incredibly rare.

When eating ice cream I walked past a sign in "English" describing some construction work going on. I think they meant to say something like "To help blind people and people who do not walk so well, we are doing some changes to the sidewalk. We appreciate your understanding.", but it came out a bit different...

Liqur?

I went into a drug store to buy a bottle of tea and found a section labeled "liqur". Not sure what that might be, I took a closer look. My guess had been that it was alcoholic beverages, but it turned out that "liqur" was yogurt and coffee.

"Dalana" Horse

The chain of 100-yen stores (all items are 100 yen plus sales tax each) called Can Do now sells some Scandinavian design things. I bought some with Dalarna Horse themes. These are apparently made in Japan (the stickers above) and in Finland (the wooden horse). On the back, it said "Dalana Horse", which is probably not correctly spelled in any language.

Not a dog

I noticed a store selling t-shirts with English text and illustrations not illustrating what was written. There was for instance a shirt that said "dog" and had a picture of a snake. And a shirt that said "sushi" but had a picture of Japanese curry. I assume they are being funny on purpose, but it was still a bit weird, haha.

New Yoke cup cakes?

I passed a huge sign that had a photo of something that said "New Yoke cup cake". I asked my Japanese friend if this was some kind of joke that I just did not get or if it was just a misspelling ("York" sounds like it would be written almost like "yoke" in Japanese). She thought it was just a mistake. A very expensive looking sign to not check your spelling in.

Bear meat on pork?

Today I had lunch with one of my foreign colleagues. He reads some Japanese, but not that many Kanji (Chinese characters). Since the university has quite a lot of foreign students, and some of them do not read or speak Japanese, the cafeteria menu usually writes out the names of the dishes with Latin letters too.

Today the school cafeteria had a dish we had not seen before, 豚肉麻婆丼 ("butanikumabodon"). Since Japanese does not use spaces between words, sometimes it is hard to tell where words start and end. My colleague read the first part as "buta ni kuma" (豚に熊) and then a separation and then some more text. This could mean "bear on top of pork", though Japanese has many homophones so there are more words that are read "kuma", not only bear.

The correct interpretation is less exciting, though. "Butaniku" ("pig meat", i.e. pork) "maabou" (a Chinese spicy seasoning) "don" (food served on top of rice), so "spicy pork on rice". But "bear on pork, with rice" sounded much more interesting. And you would not be surprised if the school cafeteria actually served bear meat (they serve whale meat from time to time, and lots of weird stuff too).

When we arrived, this dish was already sold out. They then put a sign that says "準備中", which means "we are currently still in the preparation phase" and here would mean "not available yet" (so if seen on the door to a shop it would translate roughly as "not open yet") or in our case perhaps better phrased as "not available" or "sold out". The English phrase they chose to help the people that do not read Japanese is "Prepare", which is probably not the best phrase to avoid confusion...

T-born steak

There is a restaurant not far from where I live that serves "T-Born steak".

A girl named Carlos

In Sapporo there is a chain of bars where the girls have bunny girl costumes that show off most of their butts and are also pretty revealing in general. As I understand it, the girls will come and stand at your table and drink with you, and they gain most of their income buy getting paid for each drink you order for them to drink (you pay for your drinks and for theirs).

This chain of bars is called Million, and it is apparently very popular so they have expanded a lot and have many of these bars. They also have very many advertisements in various magazines. Last night I was looking at one of these advertisements while my friend was checking his phone. I noticed that they had printed photos of the butts of the girls presumably working there and written their names (stage names) on playing cards. So there is a "three of clubs" girl showing her butt, for instance.

While there are only 40 girls on each page, they have several duplicated cards even on the same page, but with different girls. This of course also means that there are many cards that are not represented at all, which seems like a strange choice.

When looking closer, there are also some names that makes you wonder who decided that would be a good name for a girl. I would not choose "Shampoo" as a name, but maybe some people think it is cute. "Orangina" and "Calpis" are juices sold in Japan, and if I ever have to suggest a stage name for a female friend, I would not choose either of them. Then we have "Jack", which when hearing I would guess was not a girl, but maybe it is short for something you would call a girl. But then we have "Carlos". What kind of girl is called Carlos?

Sake museum; free sake, not so much museum

We have a museum called the Chitose Tsuru Sake museum here in Sapporo. There is also a place called Chitose, where our international airport is located, but the name of the museum is unrelated. It is named after the sake making company Chitose Tsuru (the "One thousand year crane").

Models illustrating sake making

There were even English explanations. Understandable, but not very grammatically correct.

The place is called a museum, but is very small for a museum. It is just one fairly large room. There are some exhibits, like small models showing how Japanese sake has been made traditionally, old tools used in sake making, and my favorite: the old posters trying to sell sake. The posters are nice because you can see the change in fashion (clothes, hairstyles, etc.) over the years.

Apart from the small exhibits, there is also a lot of souvenir shopping. Mainly different types of sake. Some types that you can basically only buy in the museum.

The crane design is nice

The expensive stuff

Blueberry!

You can also try alcohol for free. The let you try pretty much anything they sell. We tried the super expensive stuff too (the second most expensive one was sold for 2000 yen per small glass in a bar my friend went to, she said). I also tried some umeshu (Japanese plum wine) made from sake (normally it is made from shochuu). One had blueberry flavor, which was quite nice.

Extra good water

They seem to give you any amount of sake you want, and my friend said she was pretty drunk when we left (at three in the afternoon). You can also have as much water as you want, from a spring with what everyone believes is the best water in Sapporo (which is the stuff they use in the sake making). Since most water in Sweden is really good, I rarely get impressed when people say: "This water is so great, you have to try it!", though.

Sake-kasu ice cream

I also had ice cream made from waste products from the sake production. So my lunch was sake and plum wine, with some ice cream. Very healthy, I am sure. We then happened to pass a bar where my friend spotted someone she knows, so we stopped by there and had some wine. Later, I ended up helping out in our magic bar where people kept buying me vodka.

Every year they used girls in kimonos on the posters

Three years before I was born, and two years before I was born

One year before I was born, still kimono. And then, the year I was born something happened, and then they wore non-kimono for a few years (now they are back to kimonos again).

My favorite among the sake models

No F**cker of hope

I spotted someone wearing a jacket with strange writings again. This time it was not so bad, but first I misread the "No flicker of hope" because the letters are too close to each other.

The English is wrong in places ("God do not help us") and slightly depressing overall.

"No flicker of hope"
"God do not help us. God only observe us"
"No more hope"

Jesus, Sex, Fuck You

I saw a guy wearing a jacket that says: "Ginrhymes, Jesus, Sex, Fuck You, 1975".

Mr. Thumb's up and his "gil"

I went to Starbucks with woman from Sweden yesterday. I wore a t-shirt with the Facebook thumbs up button, and the Japanese text that goes with it (いいね). The guy we ordered our matcha lattes from thought the t-shirt was very funny and complimented me on my choice of clothes today.

When we got our matcha cups, mine had a thumbs up drawing and いいね written in katakana (イイネ). This was pretty easy to figure out, but the other cup said "GIL". My guess is that it means "girl", which I guess is an accurate description of who it was for. Though not that discriminative, there were many other girls in the same Starbucks.

The Happy Cock

I passed a place that someone had decided to name "The Happy Cock". Not sure what kind of place it was, but it looked like a bar.

God Bless Christmas

The Christmas decorations start when Halloween ends, so there are now lots of big advertisements stating: "God Bless X-Mas". I am not sure that is how I would have written it, but why not.

2 adults within 1 infant

The cycle boat rental sign specified that you should ride "2 adults within 1 infant". We did not have an infant, and I am not sure you could fit two adults in one anyway, so in the end a swan boat was rented instead.

There were also some turtles swimming around in the pond

Sushi places in Stockholm

This menu has a fairly wide selection

 In Stockholm there are very many sushi places. Some of them are run by Japanese people, but most are not. Some have strange things on the rice that I have never seen in Japan, and some have very few things to choose from.

This menu has mistakes in the Japanese writing ("moriawas" is not possible to write using the Japanese alphabets and it should say "moriawase"), in the Swedish writing ("mellan sushi" is not always incorrect, but here it is and it should say "mellansushi"), and in the English writing ("vegetalbe" in one place, for instance). And it sometimes mixes Swedish and English ("Servering with rice").

This place is called "Dosanko", which is funny to me since it means something like "From Hokkaido", and I sometimes present myself as "dosanko", when people not from Hokkaido ask where I am from.

A fun evening in red

Red triangles, gifts from different friends

Yesterday I worked until very late, and decided to stop by the Italian restaurant that my friend runs, since they are open until early in the morning. I was told that a few days earlier a group of foreigners had shown up and asked (in English) if there was an English menu available. My friend who speaks almost no English became panicked and just said "nai nai" ("no", in Japanese) and gesturing the Japanese gesture for "no" (which most people who are not from Japan do not recognize, I guess). Since then, he has begun thinking that having an English version of the menu might be good, so he asked me if I could translate their menu. If I show up with an English version of their menu, he would give me a free meal, he said. Which would probably be quite much cheaper than my usual hourly pay, but since we are friends I said that of course I will do it.

He gave me a piece of water melon just for accepting the offer.

A man came in and sat next to me at the counter. We have met several times before, and he has come to our magic bar to see me too. He said: "I promised to buy you dinner when we met near your birthday, right? And I still did not do that, right?" I have no memories of him making such a promise, but it might be true (and since it must have been at least one year since he made such a promise, I may be a bit fuzzy on the details of our last conversation). I said as much, but he was quite sure he had promised that, so he paid for my dinner yesterday.

Then I went home and started translating the menu (they gave me one big plastic folder with a laminated menu to take home). Another friend suddenly called me (people very rarely call me) and asked if I was near the place she works. Since I was at home, the answer was yes. She said that a guy we both know was coming to her place in his Ferrari, so I should come over and get a ride.

I figured that for riding a Ferrari I should wear cool sunglasses, so I grabbed a pair before leaving. I walked over and arrived slightly before the Ferrari. My friend's friend also showed up in his Lamborghini. Both the Ferrari and the Lamborghini were very cool. I have never been very interested in cars, but these cars looked cool and the sound the made was also very cool.

Me, looking like a guy who owns a Ferrari

I got to ride around a few blocks in the Ferrari, and it was like riding in a roller coaster... Very powerful acceleration!

Me sitting in a Lamborghini (which was so low it was hard to get out). Also worth noticing is: 1) the police passing in the background; 2) the Engrish written on the car ("muffer that of best masterpiece is a heat magic")

When we were standing around taking photos of the cars, lots of people came up to me and said things like: "Very cool!" (in English, no less!) and "Is it OK if I take a photo?" (in Japanese, of course). I said that I believed it would be fine, but that it was not my car. Everyone seemed surprised that it was not my car... I don't even have a driver's license. I guess it is the sunglasses?

Sitting around in a Ferrari

"Sorry, we're open"

I found a chance to get a clear photo of a sign I have seen before. It says:" Sorry, we're open". I am not sure that is something you need to apologize for...

The second sign says: "Company is all right with a Japanese. When I cannot speak Japanese, I cannot offer service of our store". What they wanted to say was probably "If you cannot speak Japanese, you cannot use the services of our bar".

"water massage -- Shoes for Men's & Women's"

This sign is located in the fancy shopping district in Ginza, and it says: "water massage -- Shoes for Men's & Women's". Not sure what they mean. Fairly sure the apostrophes are incorrect. I think it is a shoe store.

Ass Steak

This place sold "Ass Steak". OK, there was a "." indicating the contraction, but it is still an interesting way to shorten the product description to fit the sign.