Posts Tagged: t-shirt

Japan — 4 Comments
6
Nov 07

English T-shirts in Japan #4

Terror T-shirtHere’s the latest installment in my English T-shirts in Japan series. This one is modelled by a ten-year-old boy in one of my English classes. I really don’t know what the message is here. Do you? Does anybody?

What were the designers thinking? In fact, what was the mother thinking when she bought this T-shirt? Perhaps this is how it happened…

Designer: Okay, I’ll draw a scary dragon and add some random English phrases from Fox News. Perfect!

Retailer: Nice! A scary dragon with lots of English. We’ll sell these no problem!

Mother: Great! A scary dragon and some English! My son will love it!

Son: Woah! A mad dragon and some wicked cool graffiti!

Me: Hey, nice dragon. What does that say? Hang on, let me see…

Eye-catching fashion with fear plucking at one’s heart. Horror of potential terrorist acts involving biological weapons.

Terror T-shirt

I dare you to comment! ;-)

Japan — 3 Comments
3
Jun 07

English T-shirts in Japan #3

I’ve had a busy evening changing over from the ready-made template on LongCountdown to one of my own custom designs, which you may have seen on my other blog, Nice4Rice. I hope you like the new look. It’s all part of sprucing up the blog for the birth of little Rikuto at the end of July.

I’ve been slack of late with writing new blog entries. I think I’m suffering from writer’s block as I don’t have much to talk about. That will change though as I’ll be using LongCountdown to keep Rikuto’s grandparents in England up to date on how he’s progressing. Hopefully, you’ll all follow along as I learn how to be a father.

Human life is a wonderful thing. Mankind has achieved so much, but in the spirit of my “English T-shirts in Japan” series, let me say…

I love mankind, but...

Japan — 1 Comment
18
Apr 07

English T-shirts in Japan #2

In my first post on English T-Shirts in Japan, you saw the “Honey Spunk” shirt. Here’s another classic, modelled by one of my seven-year-old students. What do you think?

Don't Kick Yourself!

I explained the meaning to the class by kicking myself on the bum with my heel, and yelping “Ouch!”. I think they understood!

Japan — 3 Comments
4
Feb 07

English T-shirts in Japan #1

The Japanese love to wear clothes with English on them because it supposedly looks cool, yet they often can’t understand what these slogans say. This week I had one student with the expression “No Time to Kill” emblazoned on her shirt, which although perfectly acceptable English, I doubt this housewife is busy enough to warrant wearing such a shirt!

Clothing manufacturers take advantage of this ‘English is fashionable’ attitude and produce shirt after shirt with random English words that make no sense. How about this one:

A Honey Spunk T-shirt

Now where I come from, the word ’spunk’ refers to number three in this list from the American Heritage Dictionary:

spunk (spŭngk) n.

  1. Informal Spirit; pluck.
  2. Punk, touchwood, or other tinder.
  3. Vulgar Slang Ejaculated semen.

If you can remember any ‘Funny English’ shirts, leave a comment below or send an email (with a picture if you have one) to ‘nick at the title of this blog’.