Friday, November 30, 2007

"Kyan"

My friend Jon Rahoi (who runs a fantastic site about mangled English spotted in Hong Kong and various locations in China) has recently sent me a photo of his personal trainer's tattoo.



Jon says:

Hi Tian - my personal trainer showed me his tat today. He thinks it says "Kyan" which is his son's name. He said his Taiwanese-Okinawan friend wrote it for him. In Cantonese I think it says, "hei nguk mo" (happy house fight or brawl or something) and I'm guessing it would also be at least three syllables in Japanese, too. So I thought he was on crack. BUT when I put them into Google



I get 76,000 pages - mostly of a girl named Chiaki Kyan, who is a cosplay idol. I'm stumped as to where they're getting "Kyan," though. It's a mystery to this poor gwailo...

anyway, thought I'd share.