Engrish

I saw this on a popular shopping street in Seoul. It's a rather extreme example, but bewildering text like this is everywhere in Japan and Korea. When I came across the awning pictured above, it wasn't actually as shocking as it could have been, because I had already seen this exact storefront on Engrish.com, a wonderful site that catalogues these hilarious phenomena.

How does this happen? Anything in English is COOL. So it's used everywhere in Japan and Korea, even though the vast majority of the target demographic can't understand it.

As mentioned above, http://www.engrish.com has all the goods in this department, but I'll list some more that I've personally encountered.

Yes, the first one is a dentist's office. Tomato Planning provides some kind of real estate service as far as I can tell.

Like with a lot of Engrish, often the interesting part to me isn't so much the grammar errors (tooth/teeth), but the attitude conveyed in the message.

This is a small desk organizer I bought whose sign reads "I will enjoy your space combining various items".

The robot in question was a fifteen-foot figure at a children's museum where many people have their pictures taken.

This cap makes a strong case, but is completely out of touch with the state of Japanese drug use, as far as I know. Penalties for even small user quantities of marijuana or cocaine involve significant jail time, and there isn't any legalization movement to speak of, making it that much stranger that I found this hat in a Sears-like department store.

I learned in Poland that you can't really expect people from totally homogeneous countries to grasp the complexities of American race relations, and I must admit, I'm not sure where I would start if I had to explain to this store's staff why they shouldn't have a rack labeled "black music".