deep jdm thought

Ok, notice how when an import magazine, Superstreet, SCC, etc. does a feature on a tuner's car in japan? Theres at least one in just about every issue. Well, my question is, all of the window banners and stickers are in english. Why is this!?!?! If the car is in japan why isnt the writing in japanese?

Makes ya wonder what the kanji for "stupid american riceboy buy our product" is, huh? Yeah its a monday.......sue me

Originally posted by NismoDrifts
Ok, notice how when an import magazine, Superstreet, SCC, etc. does a feature on a tuner's car in japan? Theres at least one in just about every issue. Well, my question is, all of the window banners and stickers are in english. Why is this!?!?! If the car is in japan why isnt the writing in japanese?

Makes ya wonder what the kanji for "stupid american riceboy buy our product" is, huh? Yeah its a monday.......sue me

I donno, all I can think of is that, in general, japanese think of americans like we think of japanese. They want american stuff, we want japanese stuff. Our ricers put banners in japanese, they put banners in english :D:rolleyes:

Oh yea, and what does kanji mean? Just wonderin :D

Originally posted by Gonthrax

Oh yea, and what does kanji mean? Just wonderin :D

Kanji is sorta like their alphabet. They actually have 3 (kanji, katakana, hiragana). Kanji are Chinese characters and are really complex. Katakana and Hiragana are phonetic. There are 52 primary syllables, all of which are a consosant followed by a vowel with the exception of "n". Katakana is used to spell foreign words while Hiragana is used to spell Japanese words and sound out Kanji.
Now, I'm fairly certain that is much more than you wanted to know.

As for why Japanese cars have English banners...
The way I understand it it can be one of two things:
1) Following the example of Japanese car manufacturers...
All the major Japanese car companies use English instead of Japanese for their logos and emblems. The reason being that most Japanese people can sound out foriegn words that are spelled out in Roman letters like "Honda." However, every other market in the world cannot even get a hint of the Kanji for Honda. That way it saves on money because they only have to make one version of the logo. Tuning companies picked up on this and have done the same. 5Zigen writes their logo in English even though "zigen" is Japanese for "dimension." Tuners themselves just sorta followed suit. A notable exception is Mugen. They write their logo in Japanese most of time.

Another possiblity...
2) Kanji can get really complex with more than 10 strokes per character. English, however, is relatively simple with at most 3 or 4 strokes per character.

Wanna see the goof-ups of the Japanese writing English, head over to www.engrish.com

Kanji........sigh ok time to confess..........I DONT KNOW!!! hahahaa i guess its just like a popular slang japanese language maybe? I mean all of the japanese lettering on the side of our ricer's cars is called kanji, but i dont believe its like traditional written japanese, so oh well its a japanese written language, thats all i know :confused: these boards always have me leaving with a different question than what i started with! GAH! :D

Kanji:
http://files.automotiveforums.com/uploads/641868pi.jpg
Notice the complexity. Used for most words.

Hiragana:
http://files.automotiveforums.com/uploads/596315no2i.jpg
Notice how curved it is. Used for sounding out kanji and modifying them.

Katakana:
http://files.automotiveforums.com/uploads/977098john.jpg
Notice how angular it is. Used for foreign words.

Correct me if I'm wrong...

http://files.automotiveforums.com/uploads/983301Honda.jpg

I'm not Japanese btw... I'm just learning it at University. :D