Do Not Mix the Heroes and the Monsters

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This is a silly picture, but I like it a lot. It’s from the Ultraman store in Yaesu Chikagai - the vast underground shopping mall attached to Tokyo station (it’s funny that the Japanese borrow from English to describe an above ground “shoppingu moru,” but if it’s underground, they have their own specific word, “chikagai”). You’re looking at 2 bins of Ultraman finger puppets (and you can see Eidan’s hands in there too) - one contains heroes and the other contains monsters. The sign reads “hīrō to kaijū wo mazenaide ne,” which means “do not mix the heroes and the monsters, ok?” with Ultraman and a monster adding “onegai” - “please.”

The verb is mazeru, “to mix.” Thanks to the class I’m taking I recognized the “nai” form, which is the informal, negative form (kids are usually addressed with informal language). I needed Maria to explain the “de” at the end - it makes the verb a command. Then “ne” is there to soften it a bit. The word bubble underneath saying “please” provides an additional, humorous contrast to the command.

Ultraman originated in Japan, and I can’t get over the fact that they put “ultra” in his name, as that’s a word that is really hard to pronounce in the Japanese syllabary. His name comes out as ウルトラマン - Urutoraman. His logo always has the ル (ru) and ト(to) in slightly smaller print, to suggest that those syllables should be de-emphasized, but still, it’s not a word that lends itself well to Japanese at all.

[tags]Ultraman, Tokyo, Tokyo Station, underground shopping mall, Yaesu chikagai[/tags]