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When I was walking back to my dorm today I saw a Japanese guy wearing a yellow t-shirt with big, black print letters. The message on the t-shirt read: “BIG BLACK PRINT LETTERS ON A YELLOW TEE”.

I also tend to see a lot of shirts here which have English messages on them that make absolutely no sense whatsoever. I suppose it’s similar to how in America people used to get tattoos of Japanese/Chinese characters that made absolutely no sense whatsoever. I even remember seeing a photograph online once of a guy’s tattoo where the Japanese characters were actually reversed, lol.

I also see a lot of t-shirts from places I know. I’ve seen Penn State t-shirts (my home state’s university). I even saw a Philadelphia Freedom shirt. The Philadelphia Freedom were a soccer team for a league that shut down in 1997. I went to quite a few of their games with my Dad and my brother sometimes, too, I think. But, how one of their t-shirts ended up on the other side of the world is beyond me. I’m pretty sure the people who wear these shirts have no real connection to the places either.

It sort of reminds me of one time when I was in Vermont at my college, Middlebury College. I went with some friends to the nearby grocery store and when we were leaving I saw a guy standing there with a Penn State hat on. So I went over to him and asked him about the hat to see if he was from Pennsylvania or if he went to the university or something.

He didn’t respond. I realized that, under his hat, he looked sort of Mexican so I asked him in Spanish if he spoke Spanish and he responded back in Spanish, yes. So I asked him if he knew what his hat meant and he said he had no idea. I explained to him that it was a Penn State hat which was the university in my home state and I asked him some other questions about what he was doing in Vermont, etc. He didn’t say too much. I think either he was surprised that an American was speaking to him in Spanish (not too many people up in Vermont can speak Spanish) or more likely, he was an illegal immigrant and was nervous that some white stranger was asking him questions about what he was doing for work and when he came to Vermont and so on.

Even my non-Japanese friends in my classes at Keio University fall into this sometimes. I remember my German friend who came in wearing a “Hershey Park” t-shirt. Hershey Park is a small amusement park in Pennsylvania, a couple of hours away from where I live. It’s also the place where Hershey’s Chocolate started, I believe. I asked him if he had ever been there and he said “no”, so I asked him how he got the shirt and he said he bought it in Thailand. lol, Thailand?? The shirt looked like it was made in the 80s, too. Maybe someone got a hold of an old design and started mass producing them there.

My other friend, although he grew up in America and speaks English perfectly well, often wears Japanese t-shirts with non-sensical English written on them. Why he does this, I’m not completely sure. In any case, my friend Matt often makes fun of him for it.

Well, tomorrow is my first full day of classes since we got vacation for the measles outbreak. I’m off to sleep!

This entry was posted on Monday, June 4th, 2007 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.