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.