Understanding Cultural Differences Through CSI: Miami

When you live in a place like Japan, you never know what cultural wrinkles you’ll discover next. Maybe you’ll stick your chopsticks upright in your rice (which is only done during funerals), pour your own beer (bad manners to do it yourself), or accidentally order some gyumotsu because you didn’t know it was pan-fried beef intestines (yuck). My wife and I are both hooked on CSI: Miami, but because of the language difference, she usually watches the Japanese-dubbed broadcast on satellite channel Wowow while I stick the good old English version. During an episode we watched in English last night, the character Delko called his sunglass-wearing boss Horatio Cane by the nickname “H.” “What did he just call Horatio?” my wife asked, not sure she’d heard correctly. “Oh, you know, Horatio’s nickname is his first initial,” I said, and her eyes went wide with surprise. For reasons unknown, the letter “H” has become the universal euphemism for anything related to sex in Japan. For example, if a person is “H” (always pronounced with a Japanese accent, ecchi) he or she thinks about it too much, and the most common way to refer to the act in general is H suru or “to do H.” Thus, the idea of leaving Horatio’s nickname intact in the Japanese version of the show was just not going to work, and the lines were rewritten.