Last time I wrote about the concept of “bottle keep,” which is when you pre-purchase a bottle of liquor for your own use at a restaurant or bar. It’s just one of a large number of “foreign” words used in Japan that might confuse you. Japanese always wonder why we look puzzled when they use some “English” words, like anketto (which is actually French, enquête, meaning “questionnaire”) or arubaito (from the German arbeit, which the Japanese use to mean “part time job”), and these wasei eigo (“made-in-Japan English”) words which make perfect sense…to the Japanese. How many of these can you guess the meaning of? (Answer below.)
American dog
fancy shop
morning service
shutter chance
baton touch
soft cream
guts pose
handle keeper
link free
coordinate snap
oneman bus
virgin road
Looks like a “goatse” but it’s…Handle Keeper
(Answers to the above words: American dog = a corn dog; a fancy shop is a shop that sells Hello Kitty and other character goods; morning service is breakfast served at a coffee shop; a “shutter chance” is an opportunity to take an excellent picture; “baton touch” is a relay racing term, but any time you hand off responsibility to someone you can use it; soft cream is soft-serve ice cream; a “guts pose” is posing with an exaggeratedly strong pose; handle keeper = designated driver; link free means “it’s okay to link to this website”; coordinate snap is coordinating fashions and photographing them; a “one man” bus is a bus with only the driver, and no second employee whose job it is to take your ticket; and while we might say “walk the aisle” to discuss a woman getting married, the Japanese would use the phrase “walk the virgin road.”)
