There are certain eternal questions about Japan. Like, why do the Japanese insist the color green (for example a traffic light) is really blue, always using the word for blue (青い aoi) to refer to a green light? Why do some some trucks play the Disneyland Main Street Electrical Parade theme song to let you know they’re backing up? Another question that puzzles foreigners is, what’s up with Japan’s love of writing decorative English all over the place? Although most Japanese study six years of English, they’re usually content to let whatever skill they had at the language fall by the wayside after school is over, since it’s never needed on a daily basis here. Still, they seem to love to decorate their society with meaningless English phrases, printing them on everything from helpful public signs (“the lavatory has separated to the male and the woman, don’t mistake”) to T-shirts (“I feel happiness when I eat a potato”) to the sides of SUVs (“outdoor sport is the science to raise spirits”). For some reason the Japanese love printing strange English on trash cans, too, and almost every trash can for sale in store will have some strange English on it, like one I saw recently which queried, “Would you like to review what your life should be…?” I wonder if Japanese feel the same way about English as gaijin feel about kanji on T-shirts?
It’s common to see “decoration English” in Japan.
