(no subject)

[unbibium]

Highlights from an article on the decline of manners in urban Japan:

"The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has taken the step of convening a commission of eminent experts known, without a hint of irony, as the Study Group Relating to the Prevention of Behaviour that Causes Discomfort Among Numerous People in Public Places."

The length of the name reminds me of the House of Saud's Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

"The worst that one can do in daily speech would be Shine bakayaro!, which means little more than “Drop dead, you idiot!” Such is the dearth of salty invective that angry Japanese turn increasingly to a reliable English expression, pronounced the Japanese way: Fakkyuu."

I suspect anime fans worldwide would beg to differ on the first point. But regardless of meaning, it's hard to imagine Japanese words that sound like swearing to the Anglo-Saxon ear, in the same way that it's hard to imagine German words that don't.