“You know you’ve been in Japan too long when you are jealous of your friend because the camera strap that came with his new Minolta camera says ‘With you for the best scenes of your life’ and yours doesn’t.” Japanese people do have a special relationship with the English language, since nearly all of them study six years, or up to ten years if they go to college. While most don’t become fluent in the language, the fact that people are familiar with it is not lost on companies, who have gotten quite good at creating poetic “Image English” to push their products. Just as the creators of the Swatch brand came up with that name because they didn’t realize it sounded kind of silly in English, Japanese creators of English slogans can be quite creative, and the slogans can make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Here are some fun ones:
- For Beautiful Human Life (make-up company Iona)
- Feel Your Beauty (Kanebo, the parent company to Kracie, one of our favorite companies)
- A happy present from the earth (a stationery company)
- Urban Contemporary Wave (slogan of hair gel maker Mandom)
- Inspire the Next! (slogan of Hitachi)
- For Your Just (annoying slogan of Yamada Denki)
- For your happy and joyful morning (a local radio station’s wake-up slogan)
- Feel Wood (Sumitomo Forestry)
- For Precious Life (toilet maker Inax)
I “feel wood” just about every morning, if you know what I mean.
