Last week one of my students pulled out a box of tissues because he has a cold and was about to sneeze. I expressed surprised that he was carrying an entire box, rather than just a little packet, and asked him where he got them. To my further surprise he explained that he had brought them from Japan (to the UK).
He told me that “Japanese tissues are very high quality so I made sure to bring my own”. After he said that I noticed that the box had “SoftBank” written on it and I commented on this, then remembered the first entry ever on this blog, which I am reproducing below:
In Japan you often get free tissues as a form of advertising. These came from SoftBank, one of the major phone companies.
学割
“gakuwari”
student discount
…is a portmanteau of:
学生
“gakusei”
student
and
割引
“waribiki”
discount
* * * *
I showed my students the entry (especially the picture of the dog on the packet) and they told me that the dog is “otōsan” in the SoftBank “family”.
お父さん
(おとうさん)
“otōsan”
father
“Wait, the father is a dog?! I guess the whole family are dogs, then?”
“No. Only the father”
As the below clip shows, it’s all completely bizarre:
The son is an African-American called Kojiro and Tommy Lee Jones is apparently their maid.
Bonkers.
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