From: Dan Sugalski <dan@...>
Date: 2003-01-16T23:39:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Quick question for Japanese speaker

At 1:31 PM +0900 1/16/03, Hal E. Fulton wrote:
>And it is not "really" for Japanese people, but
>used because sometimes Americans think Japanese
>looks cool (just as someone once told me that
>Japanese think that the Latin alphabet is cool
>and artistic-looking).

I think if you're going to use the kanji, you should use the correct 
kanji, though I'm not entirely sure it's a good idea. I'm put in mind 
of something from ages back when english words were considered cool 
to put on t-shirts and you'd see people in Tokyo wearing shirts with 
"FUCK" plastered all over them. I also know someone who's got a shirt 
with lots of kanji over it--one of those "chinese calligraphy is 
cool" things the new agey shops sell on and off. Some of the 
characters, of course, spell out "Stupid American". (Which was the 
reason she bought the shirt, as she read chinese and found it amusing)

I'm not sure if there's a moral here, but if there is it's either do 
it dead-on correct or do it so wildly wrong it's funny. (Or, I 
suppose, not at all, but that's not as much fun)
-- 
                                         Dan

--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski                          even samurai
dan@sidhe.org                         have teddy bears and even
                                       teddy bears get drunk