Makoto Ogawa’s Bagel Navigator.

I tend to toss my Japanese spam into a folder and then try to read it when I’m feeling bored. I’ve commented in the past about trends where 90% of the stuff all falls into the same category for a while, but I recently noticed one particular subject line that’s been showing up at least twice a month for the past six months:

人妻と秘密な関係を作りませんか？

The SYSTRANS-based Apple translation widget’s English is amusing, but quite wrong: “The human wife and secret isn’t relation made?”. Google and Bing produce the exact same slightly-wrong translation: “You do not make a secret relationship with married woman?”

The thing that G&B missed is that this sort of negative question means “wouldn’t you like to”, and neither one of them lets me flag the error. Google has a very clever UI for suggesting corrections, but it’s quite shallow, limited to rearranging and selecting alternate interpretations for individual words; you can’t select between different grammar patterns. Worse, you can only flag the translation as good, bad, or inappropriate; there’s no “right words, wrong meaning” button, suggesting that literal conversion is valued over accuracy.

Anyway, back to the spam. The sender and contents that go with this subject line aren’t always identical, but being spam, there are only a few variations. Because G&B got so close on the subject line, I decided to see what one of them could do with the rest, and the results were so entertaining I think I’ll leave them as-is.

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If you search Expedia for a round-trip flight from Osaka to Naha, the cheapest is $895. If you search JAL’s site, $335. In other words, while it’s fine to use sites like Expedia for your international flights, they’re (coughcough) “suboptimal” for domestic.

And, before you ask, the purpose of this tentative side trip is not to search for busty alien catgirls, but if any show up, I’ll be sure to get pictures.

My sister and I have managed to align our schedules for another trip to Japan. Bad news: four months from now. Good news: four months from now, which means cherry blossoms.

Dear Hello!Project, I regret to inform you that the MomokoBot went a bit Westworld last night, carving a bloody path across Tokyo. She was last seen entering the H!P Wardrobe Dungeon, where we can only hope that she slaughtered every stylist in possession of a rhinestone or feather.

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In Frank Sinatra’s 1985 Tokyo concert at Budokan, the very first time he sings the title line of “Luck Be A Lady”, he clearly sings it as “ruck be a rady”.

My Japanese spam email has shifted tone again. The eager runaways have apparently all been rescued from their Internet cafés, and now we’ve moved on to lonely wives who’d like to run away. She thinks her husband doesn’t want her any more and she’s lonely. Sure, he’s busy at work, but her body just aches… She wouldn’t mind making a clean break with him, so will I play with her? Of course this obasan will be quite grateful for a partner. If I’m interested, please send her mail from this (thoroughly-randomized) site.

But, what exactly does “sapo-ari” mean? The only common use of the katakana サポ is as an abbreviation of サポート, “support”. And 有り means “existence”. Which means that this lonely wife’s gratitude doesn’t come for free…

Subject: サポ有りで私と遊びませんか？

主人もなかなか相手にしてくれなくて寂しい思いしてます。仕事が忙しいのはわかっていますがそれでも私の体は疼くばかりで...どうか良ければ割り切りの関係でかまいませんので私と遊んでくれませんか？もちろんこんなオバサンの相手をしてもらうのでお礼も出します。
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よろしかったらコチラのサイトからメール下さい。

I believe I’ve finally found a case where the above weak English pun on “martial arts” actually works in Japanese. Staff fighting in Japan and Okinawa is known as boujutsu, written 棒術 (pole + technique). Identical pronunciation with different kanji, however, yields 房術 (room + technique), meaning “the art of lovemaking”.

This appears to be a deliberate pun, with the more usual words for lovemaking being bouchuujutsu 房中術 (“within a room” + technique) or keiboujutsu 閨房術 (bedroom + technique). A bit of casual wiki-surfing suggests that the pun comes from the popular Naughty Ninja Girl genre of novels and movies (much the way that the words ninja and kunoichi are basically post-WWII creations, along with the scary-black-pajamas look).