Ad Text in Japanese:
「紫外線によるダメージから、
ハリのある透明感の高い白 肌をまもります。」
「コエンリッチQ10から、日焼け止めが新登場。」
Teaser, give it a try. I’ll break it down soon!
- Harvey

This advertisement won’t win any design awards, but really the majority of the train ads in Japan are of this quality. So I guess it is representative of what you’ll see if you come to Japan.
Just because it’s lame and pink doesn’t mean we can’t learn Japanese from it though!
Ad Text in Japanese:
「この春、つかしんは１周年」
Very bottom:
「ありがとう１周年フェア開催中！！」
Let’s […]

Time to explain the previous “yaka” advertisement.
This ad is just a string of “na” adjectives with a little catch at the end… So here’s a giant word list.
Honestly I didn’t know a lot of these before looking them up. This is good stuff!
「はれやか」- 「晴れやか」- “Radiant” or “Bright”, as in 「晴れやかな顔」, for a “bright face”.
「しとやか」- […]

Going to explain this one in about 48 hours.
I think it’s pretty difficult to figure out what this is an advertisement for just from the text. So let’s let it simmer in suspense.
Anyone have a guess?
- Harvey

If you read JapanNewbie you already know, but I recently went to a talk with Jay Rubin, translator of Murakami Haruki works as well as author of “Making Sense of Japanese“.
Check out the original post if you haven’t already!
- Harvey