EngLish

It's not nice to laugh at 'Engrish', i.e. the way Japanese people often transform English sentences, creating hilarious or nonsensical marketing slogans or T-shirt messages. So I won't, not today at least. In Europe and America I have seen enough T-shirts with meaningless, incomplete or random Japanese writings...


But correct English can also be found in Japan... The question may then be if the message is supposed to mean what it says! For example, this fine specialty shop, whose specialty is alcohol, displays long and strangely faultless sentences under the Japanese text.


The slogans seem to encourage drunkenness and violence, so hopefully not many people understand them! A quick survey showed that "booze" is not commonly taught in English classes.
I like the way the first one sounds like a Homer Simpson-ism: "Life without booze? Boooring!" And I wonder if the repetition of "Drink and Fight!" is for emphasis or just to make the text long enough?

Since you are asking, alcohol is very cheap in Japan and easily available because, for example, it is sold in combini (convenience stores) open 24/7. Locally produced sake, wine, beer and whisky are very good indeed, and bottles imported from Australia, California and France are common. A bottle of very drinkable French wine can be sold for as low as 400 yen, with the average price being less than 1000 yen. A 700ml bottle of Japanese whisky costs between 1000 and 1300 yen. Also available are individual quantities, sold as a glass with a removable top; buying one of these does not really end up being more expensive than getting a bigger bottle.

With all that, is there a drinking problem in Japan? Your guess, but nobody is calling it a problem over here.