Wednesday, June 8, 2022

(2641) I don't think they will be on sale for long...

Nihon_arekore_02666_Koike_Tshirts_100_cl

... or at least, I hope they won't: t-shirts with the governor of Tokyo, Koike Yuriko  (小池 百合子) saying "mitsu desu" (密です) which san be loosely translated as "it's too close" and which see used to say almost every day in her daily press conferences when the pandemic was at its worst to remind people that social distancing is the best measure. As a matter of fact, the whole thing is a little more complicated because "mitsu" by itself also means "three" (but then it's written  "三つ" or "3つ") and the Metropolitan Government's strategy for dealing with the pandemic was the "three mitsu" (三つの密): avoid spaces that aren't well ventilated (密閉), spaces where too many people get together (密集) and spaces were people get too close (密接). If you think like a Japanese, it was a really clever campaign and it worked  --as proven by the fact that it became a video meme on YouTube and t-shirts like those in the picture. 

(For a bigger version of this picture both in color and black and white, check my "Japan Arekore" set on Flickr).

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