For some reason, the names of the buildings are “Haruki Murakami” and “Sakuragi Hanamichi” -Japanese that blends into Taiwanese society: Billing, discounts, and flames are completely familiar | nippon.com

After the war, Taiwan had a very eclectic period. In particular, since the martial law period by the National Party administration is related to the history of war and colonies, even the generation who received Japanese language education before the war had to pay close attention to the use of Japanese.

However, recently, there is a lot of “Japanese Taiwanese” that uses Japanese as it is or combines it with Chinese. The background is that entertainment such as Japanese animation and drama has entered Taiwan, geographical circumstances that make it easy to come and go as a travel destination, mutual help in the event of a natural disaster, and the provision of vaccines. So this is a very natural thing.

“Karaage”, “All-you-can-eat”, “Spicy”, Japanese found in food and shops

For example, in the old town of Tainan, names such as “Suehirocho” in the area of ​​Zhongzheng Road and “Arimotocho” in the area of ​​Civil Rights Road still remain. “Ximen Asakusa”, which was rebuilt near Nishiichiba, is also a revival of its former name. Many Japanese restaurants in Tainan bear place names such as “Ginza,” “Nikko,” and “Tsukiji.” My family has often visited a long-established store called “Toyama”, and my favorite Japanese-style izakaya in Taipei is “Sugamo”.

Fried chicken is called “Jersey” in Chinese and “Kabaza” in Taiwanese, but recently the trend is to write “fried chicken”. There is also a store that politely arranges words with the same meaning in Japan and Taiwan, such as “fried chicken chicken”. The advertisement I saw recently is up to “Roppongi Hidden Fried Chicken (Roppongi Hidden Fried Chicken)”. “Karaage” is expanding its power.

In addition, there are indications of “suimono” on the menu of Japanese restaurants and “sweet” and “dry” on the package of retort curry. It’s not a Taiwanese word, but it’s easy to understand from the letters. Japanese pop cards such as “Cheap” and “In Stock” are familiar at Japanese stores such as Don Quijote and Cardi. I also saw the notation “pre-order” at a Japanese supermarket. The reservation start in Chinese is “start purchase”, but the word “purchase” in Chinese and “holding” in Japanese are mixed. Since the reserved product was imported from Japan, the person in charge probably thought of a new word. It suits the atmosphere.

Taiwan’s “Satsuma-age” is called “tempura” and refers to “paste”. People in the Kyushu region call the paste “tempura”, so it is said that this name was established in Taiwan, which was greatly influenced by the Kyushu region during the Japanese colonial era, and that it was the Chinese character of Satsuma-age. (Photo by Ikufumi Takahashi, nippon.com)

The building names are “Haruki Murakami,” “Tetsuya Komuro,” “Karuizawa,” and “Omotesando.”

In Taiwan, there are many cases where Japanese names are given to buildings and condominiums. For example, the building near the Tianmu baseball field in Taipei and the residential area in Longjing District, Taichung bear the name “Haruki Murakami” and have a history of 27 years since its development. In Shinko in Changhua County and Taoyuan City, there are also “Murakami Haru”, which uses the same Chinese characters in Chinese reading, and “Harukami Muraki,” which replaces the Chinese characters. Both are the names that developers prefer to use in villa-type residential areas.

In addition, there are buildings such as “Natsume Soseki”, “Tetsuya Komuro”, “Joe Hisaishi”, “Ieyasu Tokugawa”, “Akutagawa Prize”, “Akutagawa Prize”, and even “Sakuragi Hanamichi”. There is also a building called “○○ Karuizawa” that bears the name of the area.

Western names such as “Kawafudairo”, “Upper East Side”, “Aigekai”, and “Rodan” may be used for the Trump Tower in New York. However, looking at real estate advertisements, it seems that Japanese-style names are clearly preferred. There are three “Senri Osamu” buildings in Tainan, and the most famous of them is “Ekimae Senri Osamu”, which developed the old wall of Tainan. The advertisement says, “The appearance is Rikyu Gray, which adopts the Japanese Zen style that values ​​simplicity. The tea ceremony” Ichigo Ichikai “is a rare opportunity in life, so don’t miss this opportunity.” No matter how you think about it, the naming is conscious of “Sen no Rikyu”. In Taiwan, Obayashi has recently built a building called “Omotesando”.

It’s strange to say, “Please stop at Sakuragi Hanamichi in front of you” or “Then, I’ll go back to Omotesando” after the drinking party with my friends while I’m in Taiwan.

At construction sites in Taiwan, we often see excavators and forklifts marked with the Japanese “no entry” mark. Perhaps it is a construction machine imported from Japan. I understand Japanese a little, but even Taiwanese who can’t read Japanese can understand the meaning by looking at the characters, so there is no problem.

“JR Zhaoza” building at the exit of Taipei Metro Longshan Temple Station. A combination of Japanese “JR” and Taipei Metro’s Chinese name “Taipei” Taipei “luck”. It is thought that the name was created to create the atmosphere of the Japan-Taiwan Railway (nippon.com Ikufumi Takahashi).

Japanese in baseball and entertainment

In Taiwan, there are many words in which Japanese pronunciation has become established. For example, I sometimes use “Kai-Italy (delicious)”, and I can use “feelings” as they are. Previously, the juice “Kimenko” sold in Taiwan is pronounced “Kimochi”. I often say “hanami” and “late demon”, and I also use Japanese words “best” and “sorry” for postings on the Internet, but none of them are unusual.

Since the video game “Jikkyo Powerful Professional Baseball” was popular in Taiwan, Japanese is often used for baseball broadcasts. After the winning team is decided, the match is a “digestion match”, and “avoidance”, “quickness”, and “fourth” are well established. Home run is “Hon Blanc” by applying Chinese characters to Japanese reading. As a noun of hot blood derived from baseball, “work hard” and “one-ball soul”, and even spread to gourmet, the word “bite soul” was born.

After the spread of the Internet, Japanese entertainment fans in Taiwan became familiar with Japanese such as “exclusive distribution,” “live broadcasting,” and “live broadcasting.” They know that the Japanese word “close contact” refers to close contact coverage, and if they find out that there is a “new number”, they will let each other know. If you need to “charge” for an idol’s live talk show, enter the fan club and “charge”. Online games also require “billing”. “Billing” is in Japanese, but if you are a fan with the same temperature, you can instantly understand it just by looking at it. If there is a “broadcast accident”, it will “burn” online. These Japanese words quickly become Taiwanese buzzwords, and there’s nothing wrong with them.

When a manga artist is suspended for coverage, it is said that he is “going out for coverage” in Taiwan as well. The movement of baseball is “traffic movement”. The meaning can be understood by looking at “national conquest,” “lacrimal gland collapse,” “sprinting,” and “electric shock retirement,” and “God,” “master,” “fujoshi,” “reki-jo,” “mature woman,” and “beautiful witch” are also for Taiwanese. It’s an easy-to-understand word. On the other hand, “otaku” refers to a maniac who is familiar with one area in the case of Japanese, but “Aya” in Taiwan means that he stays at home and does not go out.

The Chinese “color wolf” is about to be replaced by the Japanese “molest” notation. “Sexual predator (metro molester)” is a little old-fashioned, and recently “train molester” has become more common. In addition, since the Japanese beef bowl chain store entered Taiwan, the word “don”, which is not found in Chinese, has become widespread in Taiwan. There is a bowl chain store called “Miyamoto Takedon” in Taiwan. Is the godfather a worshiper of Miyamoto Musashi?

Good intentions and bad intentions behind the words

In Taiwan’s internet slang, Taipei is called “Tianlong Kingdom”. “Tenryu-ri” in Tenryu is, in other words, Da’an District, Taipei City, where Tenryu people are concentrated. Using the idea of ​​the Celestial Dragons, he sometimes satirizes the attitude of looking down on people. Tenryukoku is a net slang used in Taiwan, but its origin is the world aristocrat Tenryujin who appears in the manga “ONE PIECE”. Later, it was derived from Tenryu Kuni, and the ancient city of Tainan came to be called “Koryu Kuni”.

One of the Japanese-Taiwanese half-words that I recently saw is “Solidness”. It means “plain clothes”, but originally, Chinese, which is close to “plain” in Japanese, is “soil”, but even if it is combined in this way, it has a similar meaning. Also, the hiragana that Taiwanese are most familiar with is “no”. It is widely used from signboards to product names, but the most famous one is probably the “plant hero” that was once advertised by Lin Chi-ling.

Since the author himself is familiar with Japanese, he often uses Japanese such as “successfully completed”, “elderly”, “second generation”, and “reckless” when writing. He can also use “Yabai” to interact with his friends on social media. The “Kabedon” that was done in Japan soon became “Kabedon” in Taiwan. It is a new noun that has both the appearance and sound of letters. Since there is a bond of heart between Japanese and Taiwanese, there is a lot of good intentions behind the words, and all the words are fun to use.

On the other hand, Chinese words come in via SNS such as dramas and TikTok, but there are times when political hostility can be felt behind them. Not used in Taiwan “Good morning, early in Taiwan”, “Good evening, late in Taiwan”, “Large screen (screen, screen, LCD screen in Taiwan)”, “Frequency” (Taiwanese people are not a few Taiwanese people) in response to Chinese-born words such as “(meaning Internet video, in Taiwan)”. In my personal sense, that country is by no means friendly to Taiwan. Even if people say “good morning,” I don’t feel like I was greeted very much, remembering the Chinese Air Force planes that frequently invade Taiwan’s territory.

Banner photo = It is not uncommon to see Japanese hiragana notation in the night market in Taiwan (Chanintorn.v /