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Ridiculous Japanese anti-drug poster tells would-be addicts to just eat udon instead

Scott Wilson Mar 10, 2019
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We’re not sure if we’re supposed to laugh or cry at this official prefectural poster.

Japan is a bit behind the rest of the world when it comes to how illicit drugs are dealt with. Having narcotics investigators arrested for drug possession isn’t a great start, and neither is potentially mistaking little girls’ candy for cocaine.

But sometimes Japan goes so far off the deep end in dealing with drugs that we can’t help but stare, chuckle, and wonder what the heck they were thinking, like Japanese Twitter user @thisi2internet recently posted:

▼ “Drugs are clearly already being taken here.”
(Translation below)

https://twitter.com/thisi2internet/status/1103926787606642694

How to Say No to Drugs

Use our SUTEKI (wonderful) method to say no:

Slurp udon instead of slurping drugs

Use caution when picking what you consume, like choosing good tempura

Take some udon instead of taking drugs

Eat the udon happily

Kindly go home after you’re done eating

Instead of another white powder, have some wheat flour

If you’re at a loss for what to think… we don’t blame you. The poster makes about as much sense in translation as it does in the original. We have so many questions: who is the audience here? Who could this possibly benefit? Why do you have to go home after eating? And what the heck are “T” and “E” all about?!

I suppose it kind of makes sense, since the prefecture this posture is from (Kagawa Prefecture) is famous for its udon, especially sanuki udon, a special type of flat noodle. But that’s about where the sense stops and the udon begins.

Japanese netizens similarly had their noodles befuddled:

“I think whoever made this was on drugs.”
“Better to be addicted to udon, I guess?”
“If you start huffing wheat flour, you’re done for.”
“As a resident of Kagwa Prefecture, I apologize.”

One other person pointed out that this poster was the result of a competition to decide what each letter should stand for in the SUTEKI method.

▼ That means either this was the best anyone could come up with, or only one person entered and they had to go with whatever they sent in.

これ、コンテストだったそうですね… pic.twitter.com/yA886P0biX

— クロシェット (@clochette0707) March 9, 2019

And someone else made a very astute discovery on the poster itself.

▼ “He is one-hundred percent taking that shrimp from someone else’s plate lol.”

https://twitter.com/DNM_AME/status/1104018255000231936

At the end of the day, while the poster is funny, drug addiction definitely isn’t, and the fact that this is an official poster put out by the prefecture is disappointing. Telling an addict or someone potentially falling into drug use to just eat udon instead is about as effective as telling them to “just say no.”

Although, to be fair, this isn’t even the worst Japanese anti-drug poster we’ve seen.

Source: Twitter/@thisi2internet via My Game News Flash, Hachima Kiko
Featured image: Twitter/@thisi2internet
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