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Oct 02 2015 19 Comments

Offensive family picnic?

The location of the picnic left a lot to be desired, and some would probably suggest that the language did too.

Offensive Japanese family picnic

Categorized: Photography

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Trev says

    10/2/2015 at 8:33 am

    Hate to think what it says on the boy’s shirt!

    Reply
    • Lee says

      10/2/2015 at 5:06 pm

      I’d like to think it said, ‘and die’.

      Reply
  2. Squidpuppy says

    10/2/2015 at 11:11 am

    Hilarious. And did you? LOL

    When I was a teenager, I worked at Disneyland in Anaheim, CA. Once I saw a very cute Japanese family all wearing tee shirts with charming graphics and alarming English splashed all over them – clearly not purchased in the USA. One of the kids, probably five years old, had a shirt with a big grinning frog on it yelling out “BULL SH*T!” in huge letters. Very funny.

    Of course, how often do we see non-Japanese with crazy, meaningless kanji all over their shirts? Or tattoos? That always cracks me up.

    Reply
    • Hans ter Horst says

      10/2/2015 at 2:15 pm

      Once in France we saw a t-shirt with a very beautiful and large kanji ç—” on the chest, I just wished they had looked up the meaning 🙂

      Reply
      • Squidpuppy says

        10/3/2015 at 2:01 pm

        LOL Maybe it was a punk band!

        Reply
    • Lee says

      10/2/2015 at 5:12 pm

      I did!

      That’s funny. But yeah, it works both ways. I was back home in the UK years ago and a friend was very pleased with a t-shirt he’d been given by someone connected to the film industry. The Japanese looked cool he thought. And as such he’d been wearing it about town. But when we told him that emblazoned across his chest was the name Leonardo DiCaprio, its coolness factor took something of a dip!

      Reply
  3. Hans ter Horst says

    10/2/2015 at 2:17 pm

    If you consider that nature is not that far away even in Tokyo as you showed a few days ago, I’m wondering why they are having their autumn picnics on very likely polluted ground in a harbour.

    Reply
    • Lee says

      10/2/2015 at 5:14 pm

      It was taken in Enoshima, where there’s a beach. Just by where they were sat actually. But to be fair, the beach was even less appealing than the area in the photo…

      Reply
  4. Tom says

    10/3/2015 at 11:04 am

    Great photo. Location and t-shirt are great. Got to love the boy’s look too! 🙂

    Reply
    • Lee says

      10/4/2015 at 4:09 pm

      Thanks. Yes, the t-shirt was funny, but the boy’s look made it for me.

      Reply
  5. LAObserver says

    10/4/2015 at 11:34 am

    I saw the same type of t-shirt in SE Asia two months ago. One was worn by a university student who was attempting to learn some conversational English. As politely as humanly possible, I suggested that among more educated English speaking persons, this t-shirt would be considered bad form.

    Reply
    • Lee says

      10/4/2015 at 4:12 pm

      Good on you. I guess it’s a word heard so often on TV, and even more so in films, that it must just seem normal.

      Bad form is such a lovely way of putting it.

      Reply
  6. An Ex Expat says

    10/4/2015 at 9:39 pm

    Part of it is that as its in English, there’s not the emotional, cultural connection with the language that a western, English speaking person would have which is why for me as an example, using similar language in Japanese, for example, wearing a T- shirt with 死ね!printing on it doesn’t quite have the same shock value for me as it would for a Japanese.

    Reply
    • Lee says

      10/5/2015 at 7:42 am

      That’s absolutely spot on. Simply a word/phrase rather than something with any emotional or cultural connection yeah? Makes total sense when you put it that way.

      Reply
  7. AF says

    10/6/2015 at 8:26 pm

    It is cool to see how well they were synchronized together. They were all dressing black T-shirts, and since the adult person is the leader of the group she has a big message on her clothes. Also we can see a “tablecloth” with “tiger like pattern” for everybody to sit on.
    .
    Then we have the color pallete, mostly black and White with blue (shoes and pants) and red (pants, accessories against the hard and grey rocky background (like a wild choice). As a side note I would ask myself what kind music style they are into too. I can almost bet that there is a story behind those guys.

    Reply
    • Lee says

      10/6/2015 at 9:47 pm

      Good point. Hadn’t really thought about that. Clearly some thought had been put into it.

      As for music, they were in reasonably close proximity to this little punk festival. Which, considering the t-shirt, can’t have been a mere coincidence.

      Reply
  8. AF says

    10/7/2015 at 1:22 am

    I think you are correct Lee, hahaha, good reference.

    Reply
  9. cdilla says

    10/9/2015 at 1:52 am

    Definitely an odd place to choose for a picnic. But using a famous search engine to look at the nearby beach and attendant hotels maybe it was awash with delicate westerners all ready to take umbrage.

    Reply
    • Lee says

      10/9/2015 at 10:54 am

      Yes, definitely plenty of foreigners knocking about. But hopefully not plenty who’d take umbrage!

      Reply

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