The above chicken restaurant in K'enting 墾丁 has a Japanese name. This in itself isn't all that unusual in Taiwan, as anyone who has read my other blog, Sponge Bear could wearily tell you. What's different here is that the name isn't really Japanese. Kamban かんばん is merely the phonetic rendering of the establishment's Mandarin Chinese moniker K'angpang 扛棒, which means "Carry the stick" (at least according to Google Translate). The actual Japanese rendering of the characters doesn't compute, as my main reference sources can't recognize the first one, 扛.
I was walking down the street somewhere in the northern area of T'aichung 台中 this evening when I came upon this site. Is there anyone who could explain to me why a piece of heavy construction equipment in a central Taiwanese city would be emblazoned (boldly, proudly) with the name of a Japanese professional baseball team, the Hanshin Tigers 阪神タイガーズ?
Hey, great to see you blog here. LiveJournal loaded so slowly. Now blogspot loads much faster.
ReplyDeleteAll those pictures and posts in Sponge Bear were great. If you put together the phrases/words you mentioned (Japanese, Taiwanese) that don't make much sense, maybe you will have a book on Taiwanese mingled lingo. I myself don't remember seeing much Japanese characters in the streets at all while growing up in Keelung.
Is it possible to make the font a little larger? The words look a bit small in the post. But please don't bother if it's too much work.
Thanks for the comment! I'm looking at ways to import some of my LiveJournal posts over this blog. I'm also going to tweak the settings, including seeing if I can make the font bigger. Thanks for the suggestion!
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