HIS Kyoto-ben Travel Ad
Click here for larger image.
Major Ad Text in Japanese:
「海外行き春？キャンペーン」
「誘ってお得、３人目半額！」
This advertisement is by H.I.S., a great discriminating travel agency in Japan. You can see the two not-so-Japanese looking old-school types with their suitcases all ready to go. I found this advertisement in Osaka… That will be important later.
Let’s get down to the text.
「海外行き春？ キャンペーン」
「海外」means “overseas” or sometimes could be translated as “abroad”. Usually when Japanese say it, they mean “any country other than Japan”.
「行き」means “to go”. That’s easy enough. The next part is fun.
「春」means “spring”, as we just saw in the previous post, did you remember?
You may be wondering though, why is 「春」placed where it is? This is a joke, or pun, on Kansai dialect, or more precisely, Kyoto dialect.
As you can see from the link, in Kyoto-ben, you can put 「はる」after a verb to make it polite. For example in this case, they are making a pun with 「海外に行きはる？」which means “You’re going overseas?” in polite Kyoto dialect… And replacing the 「はる」with 「春」which means spring.
Get it? Pretty tricky.
「キャンペーン」just means “campaign”, or “special promotion”.
「誘ってお得、３人目半額！」
The verb 「誘う」means to “invite”. 「お得」literally means “value”, but is used often in advertisements, and conversation about shopping to mean “a bargin!” or, “to save money”.
For example, 「今日マックのチーズバーガーは50円だから、今 買うとかなりお得だよ！」would mean, “Today McD’s cheeseburgers are 50 yen, so if you buy them today it’s a real bargin!”
So that 「誘ってお得」means, “invite and save”.
「三人目半額！」
「三人目」means “the third person”.「半額」means “half price!” The Kanji individually literally mean that, so this is a good word to add to your long term memory.
So this last section means, “Invite (people) and save! The third person gets half price!
That’s a wrap.
- Harvey
Posted: March 20th, 2007 under Train Ad.
Comments: 4
Comments
Comment from Alex
Time: March 20, 2007, 7:30 pm
I enjoy your site and appreciate what you’re doing.
One thing about this entry, though - H.I.S. is not a great company. Far from it, they were discovered to have been selling tickets to Japanese and foreigners at different prices, foreigners having more expensive prices quoted. This practice is discriminatory and illegal in Japan.
If you’ve ever gone in to a branch to buy tickets and gotten the response that, “space for the advertised price on the internet is all booked, we only have tickets available for these prices now,” it was a total sham and a complete lie.
Despite all of that, the advert is still useful as a study tool! Japanese was my university major. I lived in Japan for a few years both as a student and as an eikaiwa employee, but am currently living in Korea and studying Korean as my third language. I’d like to do make a blog in the same format as this one, only I’d use Korean media as.
Keep up the good work.
Comment from claytonian
Time: March 21, 2007, 1:15 am
in the feed, it seems your link html was left unclosed ( missing)
Comment from harvey
Time: March 21, 2007, 11:25 pm
Hey Alex!
I had no idea about the H.I.S. scandal. Do you have any web references to those incidents? I would like to see! I have never had a bad experience at HIS, but it could be cause I can speak Japanese fine, and maybe half the time I am going with a Japanese person when I am making the booking.
I usually just get my ticket by my own means, and get a hostel or something to stay in, but occasionally HIS has unbeatable deals to Korea and Taiwan that I just can’t pass up! Hrm…. Maybe I’m being used.
Thanks for the tip though I’ll watch out for that.
Glad you like the site! A lot of work goes into each “lesson” on this thing!
Comment from Maky
Time: March 22, 2007, 11:12 pm
Here is a link on the HIS pricing scandal: http://www.debito.org/HISpricing.html
I think it’s funny how Shinjo always has foreign white girls around him in his ads. :O
This is a great site! 
Keep it up!
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