This ad is kinda fun. It is by the Hankyu train company, one of the large companies in the Kansai area. All the trains in Kansai are like this… or so wish the Hankyu people.

Ad Text in Japanese: 

「見つめよう、いつもの車内。」

「ヘッドフォンの音量や、話し声の大きさは控えめに。」

[thought bubbles] 

「赤ちゃん寝ている 。音もれしていないかな・・・」

「読書中だから、静かに話そう ・・・」

[Small print at the bottom]

Too lazy to pick that up! Heh. 

Let’s get into it!

「見つめよう、いつもの車内。」

「ヘッドフォンの音量や、話し声の大きさは控えめに。」

「見つめる」- This verb usually means to look at, gaze at, a little more strongly or intensely than regular 「見る」. For example,「見つめ合う」 would be like two lovers looking into each others eyes. I did a google image search for 「見つめ合う」and found this image of Mickey and Minnie, 見つめ合っている-ing.

However, in this case, there isn’t any deep emotional staring going on. We’re just “looking in”.

「いつもの車内」- The phrase 「いつもの」means something like, “the usual”. 「いつも」 means “always”, so you can kinda see how the 「の」could make it seem like the noun form of “always”… Though perhaps that’s reading a little too much into it.

「車内」is a term which means, “inside the train”, it can also mean “inside the car” or “inside the bus”. For some added knowledge, the term for inside an airplane would be 「機内」. I’m not sure about inside of a boat, but I think it would also be 「機内」! Inside a room is 「室内」.

So, the header basically means, “Let’s take a look at the situation inside our usual train.”

「ヘッドフォンの音量や、話し声の大きさは控えめに。」

ヘッドフォン are headphones. 音量 is volume, literally “sound” “volume”, Kanji makes sense right? 「話し声」is pronounced はなしごえ、and means “speaking voice”.  The next part is a little more interesting.

「話し声の大きさ」literally this means “the size of your voice”. In Japan to describe someone who has a quite voice, you would say, 「声が小さい」, and a loud mouth would be someone who is 「声が大きい」.

「控えめに」The verb, 「控える」means to “hold back”, or “show restraint”. 「控えめに」means, with restraint, which in this context means keep your headphone volume and speaking voice low.

The 「め」 with 控えめに is unique. I cannot off the top of my head think of other verbs that can be used in this way. Usually, adjectives will take this form, such as 「早めに」for  “early” , like  「ちょっと早めに行くから先に準備しておくよ。」If anyone knows of other verbs that do this… Let us know in the comments.

[thought bubbles] 

「赤ちゃん寝ている 。音もれしていないかな・・・」

「読書中だから、静かに話そう ・・・」

We’ll tackle the thought bubbles in a few days! Take care of them in the comments if you’re feeling ambitious!

- Harvey