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The sentiment celebrating the history of US-Japanese relations in this ad is nice, but I can't help but chuckle about the fact that somewhere in that period of time there was a sneak attack, a World War and a couple of nuclear detonations. Not to mention Voltron, Godzilla and Nintendo.

My how times change - and then remain the same.

And it's strange how such a polite society was also so fanatically militaristic. I once asked a Japanese friend, "What's the worst thing you could say to another person in Japanese? How do you tell someone to f**k off?"

He responded,"Oh, no, no ... we don't have word for that."

"But what do you say to someone that's really mean, when you want to straight-up kick their ass?" I persisted.

He paused, had to think about it, and replied, "Kaya-lay-o, Bacca-ya-lo."

"What does it mean?"

"Oh, well, like 'get out of here, you dumb man.'"

Priceless.

Posted by Bill at March 26, 2004 10:26 AM | TrackBack (3)

Comments

Posted by: The Commissar at March 26, 2004 11:34 PM

Posted by: Bill at March 27, 2004 09:49 AM