{"id":8903,"date":"2012-01-20T16:48:35","date_gmt":"2012-01-20T23:48:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/?p=8903"},"modified":"2012-01-20T12:08:39","modified_gmt":"2012-01-20T19:08:39","slug":"dont-eat-taberuna-or-%e9%a3%9f%e3%81%b9%e3%82%8b%e3%81%aa-or-%e3%82%bf%e3%83%99%e3%83%ab%e3%83%8a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/2012\/01\/dont-eat-taberuna-or-%e9%a3%9f%e3%81%b9%e3%82%8b%e3%81%aa-or-%e3%82%bf%e3%83%99%e3%83%ab%e3%83%8a\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Eat! (taberuna or \u98df\u3079\u308b\u306a or \u30bf\u30d9\u30eb\u30ca)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

\u30bf\u30d9\u30eb\u30ca<\/p><\/div>\n

You know how some things don’t translate? For instance, Gerber (baby food) supposedly means vomiting in French. Or the first time Coca Cola translated its name into Chinese it meant “bite the wax tadpole.” Well, the sign above is one I frequently saw while heading to the Takadanobaba Train Station in Tokyo. It says, “taberuna” which means “Don’t Eat!” in Japanese. <\/p>\n

(A verb followed by na in Japanese means “don’t do the verb” in a rather abrupt way of speaking. Taberu means to eat. You wouldn’t want to use this grammar on a guest unless they were about to eat something poisonous.)<\/p>\n

I was therefore surprised to discover that this business is none other than a restaurant! <\/p>\n

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Taverna Italian food restaurant in Takadanobaba<\/p><\/div>\n

The name comes not from the Japanese of “don’t eat” but from the Italian Taverna which is pronounced as “don’t eat” in Japanese. Too funny and too ironic. Personally, I would have chosen a different name if I was going to open an Italian restaurant in Japan.<\/p>\n

We ate there once. It was just OK. I won’t say don’t eat there, because the sign already does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know how some things don’t translate? For instance, Gerber (baby food) supposedly means vomiting in French. Or the first time Coca Cola translated its name into Chinese it meant “bite the wax tadpole.” Well, the sign above is one I frequently saw while heading to the Takadanobaba Train Station in Tokyo. It says, “taberuna” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[102,151,216],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8903"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8903"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8944,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8903\/revisions\/8944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}