In case you’re wondering, the “Japanese” section of the shirt has a mixture of actual Katakana (usually used for “style” or foreign words) and Hiragana (used for native words and [grammar] case markers). Plus, random shapes that look somewhat like Katakana. Some appear to be backwards Katakana, while some are simply made up (like the “R” character).

Also, the shirt says you need to turn you head to read it… But traditional Japanese, which was written top-down and right-to-left, was readable without turning your head. T L K
H I I
I K N
S E D
_ _ A

(edit: Vertical text is weird in Markdown)

I realize it’s meant as a joke. But if you know Japanese, even if only how to read the non-Kanji, alphabetic characters (Katakana and Hiragana), it borders on lame. Especially since they faked a bunch of the characters.

Had a ninety year old coworker named “Irv”. Coolest dude you ever met. Ww2 vet. My username is influenced by him

He always wore a gold necklace charm that looked like gibberish. People would occasionally ask about it. He would say “it’s an old yiddish expression.” Then turn it upside down and around and it read the same.

The world needs more old people with a sense of humor.

It’s such a shitty shirt that has to explain the joke on it. Other versions of that shirt just have the sideways writing on it.

I once attended a class from which I remember one moment and no context.

The moment I remember is one of the teacher showing an image similar to this one and saying “who thinks it will be the same message when I turn it sideways?” My hand shot up, but no others.

Like this image, it did not read the same way. I was thus humiliated. Hopefully I learned something else from that class!

I spent an embarrassingly long time trying to read it before realizing it wasn’t actually japanese…

アホ

Want

Oh no link to store this time, still think it’s an ad