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Kanji T-shirt seen on U.S. TV show makes Japanese viewers giggle

Oona McGee Nov 27, 2020
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According to his shirt, this guy isn’t just “huge in Japan”, he’s huge somewhere else too.

While the English language consists of 26 characters, the Japanese language contains thousands of characters, ranging from a simple stroke to represent the number one, all the way through to 84 strokes, for complicated surnames.

These strokes make even common words look beautiful — so beautiful, in fact, that some people want to wear them as a style statement, despite not being able to read what they say. That’s given us reason to laugh before, like when Lily-Rose Depp wore a shirt with kanji that read “arguments welcome”, and now it’s making us laugh again, thanks to a scene from U.S. TV show Chuck that resurfaced recently.

Chuck ran from 2007-2012, but is still available to watch on streaming platforms, where new generations of audiences can experience the show for the first time. And if you’re a first-time viewer who can read Japanese, you might want to keep an eye out for episode two of season two (“Chuck Versus the Seduction”), where the character of Morgan, played by Joshua Gomez, wears this T-shirt below.

海外ドラマって突然の謎な日本文化とか出てきたりするけど、二度見した。
ハープ奏者がこんなツイートしていいのかわからないけど、とにかく二度見した。字幕も意味深に見えてくる。 pic.twitter.com/ft8z1OylQb

— 吉田瑳矩果 SakuraYoshida (@SAKURA__harp) November 21, 2020

As you can see, the shirt has “I’m huge in Japan” written on it in English. Below it are two kanji characters, which people might assume is the Japanese translation, but…it isn’t exactly.

The first character “巨” does mean “huge” in Japanese, but when combined with the kanji “根” (“root“) after it, it becomes “kyokon“, which means…well, “huge penis”.

Needless to say, online commenters had a good chuckle over the shirt, especially given that it was broadcast to audiences across America without any problems when it first aired over a decade ago.

“Hahahaha ‘huge in Japan’ has a double meaning!”
“This made me laugh out loud when I saw it!”
“Well, okay, Mr Big Penis!”
“I bet they did this on purpose because it matches the character!”
“I envy his self-confidence!”
“I guess we can’t talk – shirts with English written on them in Japan are just as crazy!“
“At least he didn’t get this inked on him forever as a tattoo!”

It’s true that things could’ve been worse if this was a permanent tattoo. Just ask Ariana Grande, who got “7 Rings” tattooed onto her palm, only to realise later that the characters for “7” and “Rings” become “Japanese barbecue grill” when read together.

Source: Hachima Kikou
Featured image: Pakutaso
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