Ad Text in Japanese:

「テロ警戒にご協力を！」

「不審な人や車、荷物などを見かけたときは、警察署、交番（駐在所）、１１０番もうしくは近くの警察官にお知らせください。」

大阪府警察

Gotta love the flames in the background.

「テロ警戒にご協力を！」

「テロ」is short for「テロイズム」, which is, “terrorism”. It -is- in fact the shorttened form of that work, but the true is, these days you barely ever hear「テロイズム」spelled out. The abbreviation has become commonplace.

「警戒」This is a useful word to know, it means “warning”, or “precaution” or “lookout”. I rarely see it in places other than, official police or fire department things or whatnot… But I see it a lot.

「 ご協力」is the honorable form of 協力、which means “cooperate”. As you might imagine, the word 協力 is used liberally in Japanese society. You might see groups of girl scout looking people on the street yelling, 「ご協力よろしくお願いします！」when asking for donations or signatures or what not. “Please cooperate! Please give us a hand!” Is basically what it boils down to. The particle「に」before this, is a directional particle.

So, basically, cooperate with the “terrorism warning” if you will. Go along with what they say, don’t start any trouble, or the dog is gonna bite ya.

「不審な人や車、荷物などを見かけたときは、警察署、交番（駐在所）、１１０番もうしくは近くの警察官にお知らせください。」

Long one!

「不審な人や車、荷物」不審、means “shadey” in my totally unofficial slang translation. However, it is a formal word, and dictionaries will translate it as “doubt, question, distrust, suspicion, strangeness”. Very hard to understand how to use from that… For one example, the North Korean Spy Boat that was sunk and is in Yokohama bay area, is known as a 不審船 in Japanese. The ALC dictionary translates that as “mystery boat” or “suspicious boat”.

So, a  不審な人 is a  suspicious person, and a 不審な車 is a suspicious car. 不審な荷物 is suspicious luggage. You might know that the 「や」here, basically means “or” with an inclusive feel. Suspicious people and/or cars (vehicles). 「など」basically means “etc” in English, and just means that other than suspicious people, cars, or luggage, if you see anything else like that… Like you know… A suspicious dog or something… take proper action.

「を見かけたとき」 I have eluded to this already… There’s Japanese for ya, verbs at the end, what can ya do. The verb 「見かける」is to “see”, but more in a “catching sight of”. It’s not like you were looking for this thing, and it’s not as if seeing it by chance was such a bad thing. If you see someone by accident, and it’s slightly negative, you would likely use the form, 「見てしまった」instead. The「とき」at the end of this is “when”. You can make the form, “when something is done” by using the past tense form of the verb, and adding とき。

「警察署、交番（駐在所）」A bunch of nouse for where the police hang out. They even have 交番 KOBAN in Saipan! 駐在所 is actually a word for a “residential police box”. I’m not sure how, if at all this is different than a Koban. I’ll ask around and update if I find out!

「１１０番もうしくは近くの警察官にお知らせください」

１１０ is the direct number for the police in Japan.  I belive the 「番」is short for 番号, as in “number”.

「もうしくは」is a semi-formal way to say “or”. Otherways to say “or” include the casual 「か」、as in, ピザかパスタが選べるコース. A course (dinner) where you can chose pizza or pasta. Another way to say “or” is 「あるいは」, which feels just as, if not more formal than もうしくは。

近くの警察官 is “a nearby police officer”. The Kanji, 「官」is used in words for other officials as well. For example, 「裁判官」is a “judge”.

にお知らせください, is the formal way to say, “please report to”. As you probably know, 知る means “to know”, and this is the causative form… So it becomes “to make known”. This form of the verb is used to mean to make an announcement or something.

That was a long one with lots of grammar! Any questions, leave them in the post!

- Harvey