Uwajiwhat: A Visit to the Japonism Vegetables Store

At least until the Chinese government cleans up translation woes, Internet sites devoted to Engrish (or Japlish, Spanglish, etc.) will remain popular. And there will be lots of intrigue inevitable in certain supermarket aisles here in Seattle. It’s hard enough to identify many products by sight, let alone decipher what’s said on the packages.

(We certainly acknowledge how stupid and silly we sound when we try to speak Chinese, Japanese or Spanish. We laugh at ourselves, while hoping no one secretly records us and posts the results online.)

The other day, strolling through our favorite new market, we stumbled upon a package labeled “Japonism Vegetables Store.” Huh? What could this be? And was it really from Japan?

Bypassing the Chinese and Japanese writing (also poorly translated), we saw that the product is “Made with the best ingredients for the health of modern man.” Luckily, there was an English sticker to tell us more about the “ingredinets” and nutrition facts. Here we learned that the actual name of the product is “Green Onion Biscuits,” and upon closer inspection, we see they’re made in Malaysia. These “crisp and brittle” biscuits apparently have a shelf life of exactly 360 days; modern men may want to extend their consumption of the package over such a period, as one stated serving contains 25% of the recommended daily intake of saturated fat – not what we’d advertise as healthy.