For your continuing enjoyment...here are some excerpts from Richard Lederer's
_Anguished English_, the book of language bloopers:

From church bulletins:

The ladies of the church have cast off clothing of every kind, and can be seen

in the church basement Friday afternoon.

For those of you who have children and don't know it, we have a nursery
downstairs.

This being Easter Sunday, we will ask Mrs. White to come forward and lay an
egg on the altar.

This afternoon there will be a meeting in the south and north end of the 
church.  Children will be baptized at both ends.

From the newspaper headlines:

DEAF MUTE GETS NEW HEARING IN KILLING

DEFENDANT'S SPEECH ENDS IN LONG SENTENCE

DOCTOR TESTIFIES IN HORSE SUIT

POLICE DISCOVER CRACK IN AUSTRALIA

STIFF OPPOSITION EXPECTED TO CASKETLESS FUNERAL PLAN

MILK DRINKERS ARE TURNING TO POWDER

DRUNK GETS NINE MONTHS IN VIOLIN CASE

HENSHAW OFFERS RARE OPPORTUNITY TO GOOSE HUNTERS

And from signs and documents written in English in foreign countries:

(In a Bucharest hotel lobby):  The lift is being fixed for the next day. 
During that time we regret that you will be unbearable.

(In a Yugoslavian hotel):  The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job
of the chambermaid.

(Outside a Hong Kong tailor shop):  Ladies may have a fit upstairs.

(In a Bangkok temple):  It is forbidden to enter a woman even a foreigner if
dressed as a man.

These were all actually spoken/written at some point!!

Griz

15 responses total.

I stayed in a ryokan in Japan which had a curtain on the doorway leading to
the baths which said "Pubric Bass."

PC Mag (in their back-page cute-clippings dept.) cited a classified ad
trying to sell a Hula Packer printer.

Was that a name ripoff, or an error?  (:

In the case of #1, the Japanese have a great fascination with English letters
(I've forgotten their word for our alphabet), and come out with a great many
such incoherencies.  It's kind of fun trying to figure out what they're saying.
Where was the ryokan?  We were at a lovely one in Nikko in the Japan Alps.

Part of their fascination may be the strangeness. Japanese is written
using three different scripts, and none are similar to an alphabet.

(1) "Kanji" is the Japanese way of writing Chinese Characters. They borrowed
this scheme (ideaographs) and most of the characters from the Chinese.
Before that their Mongol-derived language had no written form.
(2) "hiragana" is a syllabary. In other words, one symbol for each syllable.
This is very different from an alphabet, with a symbol per sound.
It consists of grossly simplified kanji actually, but the meanings
are lost and they are valid only for their sounds.
These are needed because the Japanese language is inflected and thus has
verb endings and the like. Chinese does not, so when they borrowed from
Chinese they came up short, and needed to invent this.
(3) "katakana" is a separate syllabary. It expresses the same set of
syllables, but looks quite different. It is used primarily for words that
have no ideographs, rather than for inflections like hiragana.
Katakana is always used for writing borrowed foreign words.
Hiragana and katakana are collectively referred to as kana (opposed to kanji).

(whew)

I had forgotten the name of "hiragana".Is it any much used outside of schools?

Hiragana is absolutely essential to the Japanese language at all levels.
It is used to inflect verbs and also for helper verbs like "masu" "desu"
"imasu" etc. It is also used for postpositions.

In the schools, when the youngsters first learn to write, they do it
phonetically at first, using only hiragana, but once they are able to
master the chinese characters (kanji) these kanji replace the hiragana
for all of the stems. There is no way to use anything but hiragana for
inflections, though. 

Sometimes in elementary readers you will see kanji with small hiragana
written below it or on the side (depending on the direction of the
script). This is to help determine what reading to use, as most kanji have
multiple "readings" or pronunciations - just to make things difficult.
In adult writing, the correct reading is always determined by context.

re#4:  I do not remember where the ryokan was, because in a 16 day trip, we 
visited about that many different cities, all over Honshu, the main island
of Japan.

thanks, srw.  other, that's no way to travel.  in 10 days, we spent 2 weekends
at ryokan- one in Nikko and one down on the Izu peninsula.  The rest of the
time was day trips to temples and shrines, shopping, kabuki, etc.  We stayed
with my best friend, who had a great house in Tokyo and had finished her class
work early so we could have time together.  Wish we could get back some time.

And where might "kawase" fit into the 1)-3) mix described earlier?

My knowledge of Japanese is now being pushed a bit, however...
I could not find "kawase" per se in the dictionary, but I found the verb
"kawaru" from which one might for "kawase". The entry appeared under at least
two kanji in my Nelson's Character Dictionary as 

ka(waru) "replace, relieve" 

If this was the word you are thinking of, then the fact that the ka appears
outside the parentheses in the definition indicates that the kanji is used
to represent that syllable and the meaning, and the ending (in this case,
"wase") would be written as two hiragana.

This is a very feeble ascii art attempt to show it.
 /  | \   
/|--+--    |      |  |
 |  |     -=--   -+--+-
 |   \    /|  )   | \|
 |    \,  L| /    |___ 

 kanji    two hiragana
(read ka) (wa      se)

This kanji is number 364 in Nelson. It has about 5 different ways to be read,
which is typical for an important character like this one is.
It is known as "DAI" meaning "period, age, generation" in its "On Yomi"
reading, which means that "DAI" is what the Japanese perceived the Chinese
pronunciation to be when they borrowed the character.

The use to form "kawase" is called a "Kun yomi" reading, as the sounds are
taken from the original spoken Japanese. In modern usage, most kanji
have both On and Kun readings which are used. Usually one On and multiple Kun.

That's part of what makes Japanese so difficult.

srw, I don't know whether to be more impressed by your knowledge of Japanese
or your courage and dedication (or excessive free time) in undertaking the
ascii art.  Whuff!

I studied Japanese for a year, and amazingly remembered some of it. I
could never speak it well enough to be understood, or understand anything
spoken. I spent two weeks over there in 1974, and as long as I had my
character dictionary with me, I could figure out how to ride the trains.
that was an interesting challenge.

As far as the ascii art goes - I was having a slow day.
foo - it wasn't very good art either.
BTW I didn't just remember all that stuff, I read a lot of it out of a
dictionary. It's impressive, but deceptive. 

To be able to use a Japanese dictionary that well is quite impressive
enough.

The method of writing in Japanese using our alphabet is called "romanji" ie
Roman Writing

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