Clothes with words on them
This 'words on my clothes whose meaning i dont know' is a very normal thing now, for most countries. But actually its a VERY weird thing. if we had said to people in 1920: 'I predict that 100 years from now the average person will be walking round with whole sentences on their body, whose meaning they have no idea about'.. folk then would have said 'No way! Why would anyone do something as weird as that?!?' ... its yet another example that what is considered normal is often actually very very odd.
This mistake thing is often mentioned by Japanese to the point 'Why do you have ENGLISH on your clothes/bag etc that you do not understand?' They say 'Yes, but foreigners also have kanji on their clothes and often very silly meanings'. Yes, indeed.
But there is a fundamental difference here - SCALE. Maybe 1 or 2% of the population of the US or UK will have some kanji clothes or tattoo... and out of that about a quarter or more may actually know the meaning if they are manga or karate fans etc. But 99% of Japanese have some clothes or bag with English on it, and 90% of those people have zero understanding of the meaning.
This 'words on my clothes whose meaning i dont know' is a very normal thing now, for most countries. But actually its a VERY weird thing. if we had said to people in 1920: 'I predict that 100 years from now the average person will be walking round with whole sentences on their body, whose meaning they have no idea about'.. folk then would have said 'No way! Why would anyone do something as weird as that?!?' ... its yet another example that what is considered normal is often actually very very odd.
This mistake thing is often mentioned by Japanese to the point 'Why do you have ENGLISH on your clothes/bag etc that you do not understand?' They say 'Yes, but foreigners also have kanji on their clothes and often very silly meanings'. Yes, indeed.
But there is a fundamental difference here - SCALE. Maybe 1 or 2% of the population of the US or UK will have some kanji clothes or tattoo... and out of that about a quarter or more may actually know the meaning if they are manga or karate fans etc. But 99% of Japanese have some clothes or bag with English on it, and 90% of those people have zero understanding of the meaning.