Japanese Marketplace - Backwards signs and a good time

I was confused looking at this sign today... I was surprised by it because the place is called "SANTOUKA", but I was looking at this thing like huh... the letters are all in the reverse order.

I wonder why that is?

If you're reading Japanese horizontally, it is written left to write - As it would be typed on a computer. But if you read this sign, it's the opposite - instead of santouka ra-men it says katousan nme-ra if read left to right. It doesn't take a whole lot of thought to realize that it's written right to left instead.

but why is that?

Traditionally, Japanese is written vertically in columns going from right to left.

^source

Now, initially looking at this, you can think "but this sign does not fit either of these! It's written horizontally so it should be right to left!" Right?

Technically, yes.

but also NO.

Back before the age of doing printed/digital writing, there wasn't really a standard of how to write things horizontally in Japanese.

And so often times how they did it is following the standard of writing things vertically -- but only one character per column.

Which ends up being right to left

At some point things changed and left to right became the standard, but there are still some remnants of the old days when that was a common way of doing it. This sign is apparently one of them.

Pretty neat if you ask me.

Anyways, this place is pretty neat. It's called Mitsuwa and they have several locations around the US. It's kind of like a mini-train station (mall) in Japan, and a pretty cool experience.

 

I got myself some tasty Soba, there was a shop selling fresh Mochi and other snacks, and there was even a little micro-bakery there. -- all things that you would see in your typical station in Japan.

 

I also found these guys in the bookstore that is present inside of the store. Which I thought were not only clever, but pretty freakin' adorable.

Azon Links:
piggy
panda
_{there also were some chinese knockoffs on Azon too, but those had super horrible reviews about looking nothing like the picture and the seeds never sprouting and stuff.}

Anyways, Stay professionally cool.

- Guurg

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P.S. This place is called Mitsuwa, if you're near one and want to check it out.