黄色い線の内側

I posted this on the twitter account a few weeks back. Let's take a look in more detail to the meaning.

電車（でんしゃ）- Train
に - Particle to say 'of'
ご注意（ちゅうい）- Be Careful

黄色い（きいろ）- Yellow
線（せん）- Line
の - Possessive particle
内側（うちがわ）- Inside (behind)
で - Particle to say 'at'
おまちねがいます- Please wait

Translation
Be careful of the train. Please wait inside the yellow line.

Sometimes people and usually children play on the other side of the yellow line. It drives me mad or rather makes me terribly nervous. I've never seen anyone jump in front of the train and I hope I never do. I have been late because of death by train suicide and it's a real pain. Recently the train lines have imposed a fine for jumpers. Of course the jumpers are dead but the families have to pay for the clean up and loss of time. They hope that this will discourage people from taking that jump. So far I think it has been working. The death by train numbers last year and for this year decreased. Suicide rates haven't. People are just killing themselves in different ways I suppose. Although I heard that Korea beat Japan last year for the number of suicides.

Oh boy this is grim....

以上です。

ジョシュア  

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P.S. In case if you were wondering 自殺（じさつ） is the Japanese term for suicide.

漏水頭上注意

Down on the subway platform there was a handwritten sign with a big red arrow.

漏水（ろうすい）- Water leak
頭上（ずじょう）- Overhead
注意（ちゅうい）- Be careful

Translation
Water leak overhead, be careful.

There was a heavy rain on Monday so the water must of been dripping into the subway. The station employees' must of handcrafted this sign in a hurry and posted it to warn everyone of the dripping water. It's pretty cool to see a handwritten sign.

What do you think of the handwriting?

以上です。

ジョシュア

飲酒後

I've seen this poster a few times walking in the subway. The meaning is pretty obvious and we've seen a lot of these Kanji before but I like this sign and there is a lot of new Kanji we may not know.

Unfortunately due to the angle and lighting you can't see very well but he's thinking about alcohol.  

飲酒後（いんしゅあと）- After drinking alcohol
の - A particle to declare possession
転落（てんらく）- Fall/Tumble
事故（じこ）- Accident
多発（たはつ）- Frequency
危険（きけん）- Danger; Hazard
転落に - The fall/drop
ご注意（ちゅい）- Be careful/Pay attention
ください - Please

The man in the hat says "ふらっ" which is a verbal 'gasp' of surprise. Thanks a reader on Google+ I've learned I was mistaken about ”ふらっ” it's actually coming from the mans feet and is ふらふら in Japanese meaning "to totter, slip, or fall".

Translation
危険!!飲酒後の転落事故多発!! 転落にご注意ください 
"Danger!! Falling accidents frequently occur after drinking alcohol!! Please pay attention to the drop."

Here "the drop" refers to the standing platform at the station. Even if there wasn't a train coming falling off that edge sober or drunk might be pretty painful. So everyone please be careful.

ありがとう！！Please leave your comments below or send me an email at deathbykanji@gmail.com with your questions or suggestions.

以上です。

ジョシュア

キケン（危険）- danger; dangerous

携帯（けいたい）- mobile (phone)

電話（でんわ）- phone, in casual speech referring to your mobile phone is just けいたい

など - particle used as 'etc.'

を - particle used to link subjects with a verb

操作し（そうさ）- to operate, manage, or fiddle

ながら - a particle added to the end of a verb to indicate 'while'

ホーム - The train platform

を

歩く（あるく）- to walk

のは - a possessive particle and a subject marker together that refers to the platform activity

大変危険（たいへん）- very dangerous

です。- polite sentence ending particle

駅長（えきちょう）- Station manager

Translation: Walking on the platform while fiddling with your mobile phone, etc. is very dangerous.

This is true. Station platforms are not very big and if you have your face in your mobile, book, or etc. than your not really looking where you are going. You especially don't see other people on the platform either. Although, I take the safety of people on the platform seriously, I have been tempted to smack people's mobiles out of their hands and scream "watch where your going !#$*%!" Because that type of selfish distraction is 危険.

今日は以上です。

ジョシュア

友だちは東京に旅行しました。

For two weeks my friends from America were visiting Japan and they took some interesting photos that I want to share with all of you.


This first photo was taken on the a JR train in Tokyo by: Rob Ross

First let's look at the green letters on the right side(右):

チカン - This is Katakana that reads 'chikan' and means 'pervert'. Katakana words are typically borrowed words from foreign languages with a lot coming from English such as 'カメラ(kamera)' or 'camera', but I don't know where チカン comes from.

は - This is the Hiragana 'ha' except in a Japanese sentence when this Kana is used as the particle to mark the subject it's read as 'wa'.

犯罪(はんざい） - These two Kanji form the noun 'hanzai' which means 'illegal' or 'criminal'.

です - The particle 'だ(da)' in its plain form and 'です(desu)' in its polite form appears at the end of Japanese sentences which is typically compared to being the English equivalent of 'to be'. As a rule of thumb for any foreigner speaking Japanese "just say Desu!"

Translation: "Perversion is illegal."

Now, let's look at the red letters on the left(左）:

出来心（できごころ）- These three Kanji together form a noun 'dekigokoro' which means 'sudden impulse' or 'passing fancy'.

では - 'dewa' is a compound particle read as 'で' for 'by' or 'at' and 'は' to mark the subject.

すまされない - This is the verb 'すます' 'to finish or complete' in it's negative form 'sumasarenai' means 'to not finish or not be done'.

Translation: Literal translation would be "It is not done by sudden impulse!" If we write this sign for an English train it would probably say, "Don't do it on impulse!"

All together now: So 'チカン' means 'pervert' and what do perverts do? They 'molest'. When you think about the Japanese rush hour train with all those people crammed together you should understand that its easy for a man to get the impulse to reach out a grab a women. Then we can read the sign as "Molesting is illegal. Don't do it on impulse!" and understand the picture as 'when the women exits the train the man grabs her ass' or at least that's my interpretation of this.

If you think differently or have any insight on the situation of train molesting please feel free to leave comments.