You never know what random Japan-related thing will become popular on the Internet next. One day it’ll be a TV commercial about a cute bowl of custard pudding who eats his own head with a spoon, then it’ll be a cat who flies through space on a rainbow. Last week a department store in Osaka held a very interesting sale with a sign that went viral on the Internet almost at once, for obvious reasons. This hilarious sale shows us several things, first and foremost that the Japanese primarily view English as a decoration that’s kakko ii (meaning cool, good style) rather than as a serious vehicle for communication, and don’t think too deeply about what they write. It also shows that the word in question has no power to shock when the context is changed to a place like Japan, where people know the word through Hollywood films but don’t care if it’s used around them. (In this context its meaning in Japanese is something like sugee, pronounced “suu-GEH,” a colloquial version of sugoi meaning “amazing, incredible” sale). I learned first-hand how some of these words lose their power while raising bilingual kids in Japan. Since Japanese people don’t understand the “bad words” in English anyway, my son never showed the slightest interest in using them.
A very unique sale in Osaka.
