You’ve been in Japan too long when you see a sign for a “mansion gallery” and know immediately that it’s a building built to allow prospective buyers of high-rise condominiums (called “mansions” here) to see what the insides are like before making a purchase. Like every country, the Japanese take words and change them to fit their needs, so that sometimes a native speaker might not know what the original meaning was. One interesting use the Japanese have come up with for the letter “W” is to represent the concept of “double,” and advertisers might put a “W” in their product’s name to imply that it’s twice as effective as the leading brand. With the arrival of the Internet the letter “W” has taken on a new meaning, indicating laughter, since the word for “to laugh” in Japanese is warau but that’s too hard to type quickly. Some other versions of words you hear quite frequently in Japan include “morning call” (what a wake-up call is here), “health meter” (what they call a scale to measure your weight) and “freeter” (someone who works part-time jobs but isn’t interested in a career).
This Japanese beer is apparenly “Dy-no-mite!” www (and if you get that joke, my hat is off to you)
