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In English, Please! | Japan Probe

A commercial for AEON English lessons plays off the old Japanese with screwed up intonation = foreign joke when having a little girl ask for a second helping in English :

Meanwhile, it seems that a have been discussing a sign that was found at a QB House barber shop in Tokyo:

I ve been to a few QB House barber shops over the years, and haven t seen any sign like that. Back in the day when I could barely speak any Japanese, I went through the trouble of always looking up certain phrases and bringing some notes with me to the barber. I was never turned away.

Comments threads about the sign have been a mixture of people who don t really see a big problem with a store in Japan expecting customers to speak Japanese, and people who think this sign is yet another example of racism against foreigners. A couple people even seemed offended by notion that QB House wouldn t be prepared to deal with customers who only spoke English.

As in of outrage reported on Debito.org, it seems that none of the people expressing outrage over the sign actually called up the Japanese company to complain about it. A Japanese blogger called QB House and asked for an explanation, and got :

1)They pulled down the sign in question.

3)The purpose of the sign was not to exclude anybody unfairly but telling people in advance,”we’ll do our best, but there might be a case where we may refuse service when the communication breaks down.”

4)whether to set up a new sign or what to write on the sign is under consideration.

The new sign uses slightly different wording, and the messed-up English only serves to underline just how unprepared they are to offer service to people who only speak English. They also include Chinese and Korean versions of the message.

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