Golden Week and T-shirts in Japan

Go Tree Planters!

We are almost at the end of what is known as Golden Week here in Japan. It is a holiday period that consists of a cluster of of holidays that people often string into a full week off. Although I’m not officially taking any days off I am taking some time to relax a little bit in between the work. I even took time for shopping and bought another ridiculous mock U.S. University T-Shirt of which we have many over here.

Usually I am quite aware of what the shirts say, however this one I just bought because it fit and looked ok. When I put it on today I was surprised to find that I am proudly wearing the colors and name of The Lincoln City Nebraska State Alaska, Tree Planters, apparently.

The English language shirts here are often unintentionally very funny and, in at least one instance, quite shocking. When our daughter was about eight years old and we were still living in the states we came to Japan for our yearly visit. We bought her a silk screened sweat shirt decorated with teddy bears on it and a pages from a children’s book with some text on it. We came back to the states and she proudly wore the shirt to school and outdoors for a month or so. Finally one day I started reading the text and it was positively pornographic. Someone had lifted text, either knowingly or unknowingly, from an entirely inappropriate source and put it on children’s clothing. Needless to say, I’ve read every shirt since before buying. Until this one, that is.

Speaking of our daughter, another thing we did this holiday was to go to a department store to see her. Well not exactly her but her picture. All over the place.  She’s no longer 8 years old and she’s now working as a model out of Osaka. Time really does fly…

Summer Sale Campaign.

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8 Responses to Golden Week and T-shirts in Japan

  1. Nick Hvatov says:

    oh! I think i should send you a T-shirt With Russian text or print, or something like this as a present. I think about it seriously) Btw. I got fully stucked with one question – Where are you from originaly, if it is not a secret can you tell me?

    • Mhead says:

      Nikolay, I was born and raised in one of the seaside suburbs of Los Angeles. I’ve also lived in France and now (of course) in Japan. I never really felt like I “belonged” anywhere in particular but enjoy seeing the world and living in different places. Still have lots of family in the US and visit with them every year.

      • Nick Hvatov says:

        I see) You traveled a lot, see a lot of things and still open to new impressions )Nice! =) Keep it up!

  2. Nick Hvatov says:

    Almost forgot -You have a very beautiful daughter!

  3. old nod says:

    perhaps you need to make up some shirts for the shop that read:

    “All your bass are belong to us”….

    with the zero dot logo and name….

    old nod

    ps – I wear 2xl (sadly),

    hehehehehehe!

  4. Nick Hvatov says:

    May be it will be funny to make t-shirts with region(i don’t sure about Russia – i think that there are only few guitars are sold to my country). I mean something like – “Hell guitar Community USA” or something like that. =)

  5. Zach says:

    I love mistranslations and stuff that’s just plain made up out of thin air! It cracks me up! Poorly translated assembly instructions are always entertaining too.

    Its pretty cool that your daughter has done well in modeling. She’s a beautiful young lady!

  6. Kevin says:

    This had me cracking up – so funny. I had a pair of shoes once and the care instructions were translated from Korean to english and they were so funny I kept them for a while; the instructions not the shoes.

    Michael, you’ve been away from the US for a while so you probably don’t know that Nebraska invaded Alaska; they needed the room to plant more trees. They figured the names sounded alike nobody would notice.

    That must have been fun to see your daughter all over the mall like that. Very pretty young woman, obviously, they don’t pick us ugly people for that type of work. Thankfully.

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