Literacy is important

[dorchadas]

So I was talking with one of the other teachers today and said that I had bought a bunch of bad English T-shirts for people as Christmas presents. She said that you could find equivalently-bad Japanese T-shirts in Hong Kong, and I mentioned the practice of getting kanji tattoos. She said that when she was in Australia, she considered getting a tattoo but changed her mind, and then mentioned that she had met an American marine once who had a kanji tattoo that he had gotten because he thought it looked really awesome. It was 台所 (daidokoro). He liked the boxiness and sharp lines of the characters.

The problem is, that's Japanese for "kitchen."

She couldn't really take him seriously after that.