Saturday, August 05, 2006

Sweet Japan Pics #7: My Favourite Train Station

My favourite station in japan is not super famous, actually. I like it for two reasons...

1) This station has a store called "Nitori", which is like the the Japanese version of Ikea. Admittedly, unlike many things in Japan that are copied, Nitori is only a pale copy of the awesomeness of the real Ikea. While they have the "strange names based on feelings" thing down pat for their products, ...there are no sweedish meatballs. Thus, they get a B-.

2) This station has a sweet name.

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

When ever I'm feeling like Shitte, I drop by Shitte and feel much better.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a interesting name!! I didn't know that station...
Do you know those character's meanings?
"尻" means bum, and "手" means hand.

Shitteta? (It means,"Did you know?")

(^-^)/

Anonymous said...

What is "Ikea" and "B-"?
Does "Shitte" have any meanig in English?

(~.~;)\

Merry Man said...

Shitte has no meaning by itself, but "Shit" is a curse word... it means "poo" or "excrement"... what you leave in the toilet after eating.

"Shitty" is the adjective form.

Shit and Shitty are used more widely to describe something negatively. Eg, "What a shitty day." or "That Shit! He totally lied to me!" or.... "I feel like shit today".

"e" in english can have several sounds, remember...So, to represent the sound of the character "て" (te) to a native english speaker, I would probably write "teh" or explain that "te" to me falls somewhere between the "te" in "test" and the "ta" in "taste". As it is "Shitte" looks like it would be prounounced "Shitty".

Thus, the joke!

Merry Man said...

Ikea is a chain of stores that started in sweeden (thus the meatballs in the cafe). They sell furniture, household decorations and just about everything else for your home. All of the products are sold all over the world, so they don't give them English names, but rather Sweedish-like names that sound simmilar to a feeling in English. So, they are very simmilar in this to many Japanese businesses.

B- as in "B minus", which is a grade given in school. North American schools are on a scale that runs from A+ (the best) to F (fail). (For some reason, we only use A-D, and F. There isn't an "E" grade.) B- is between 70% and 73%.