Wednesday, April 14, 2010

from: Brendan B.
to: tiangotlost@gmail.com
date: Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 8:22 PM
subject: Lady Gaga's Japanese Arm???

Hey,

I love the site and I came across this picture of Lady Gaga in Japan and I was hoping that you could figure out what she had written all over her arm. Knowing Lady Gaga, I can only imagine. Thanks a lot!


Brendan B.


http://justjared.buzznet.com/2010/04/13/lady-gaga-is-new-to-narita/

Alan, who is a long time Lady Gaga fan (just kidding), has this to say:

Lady Gaga? Hah! But I think she is terrific and it is just so typical of her to have someone write random things in Japanese on her handbag and arm.

Anyway, the text on the handbag, which looks a lot like the text on her arm (which is partially obscured) reads:

アイ ラブ スモール モンスター [I love small monster]
東京 ラブ [Tokyo love]

The text on her arm is actually different from that on her bag:

アイ ラブ リトル モンスター
[I love little monster]

Hot on the trail of the "little monster," I see that Gaga seems to call her fans the "little monsters" and she even has a tattoo that says "Little Monsters."


So no doubt she meant リトル モンスター [ritoru monsuta-] to mean her Japanese fans. Now she just has to fire the person that wrote "small monster" on her handbag. :)

By the way, that is a Hermes Birkin bag priced worth about £3,000.

http://www.nowmagazine.co.uk/star-style/fashion-news/450544/lady-gaga-goes-japanese/1/

3 comments:

  1. Yes, the comments work fine on recent posts.
    The error happens only on posts in March and earlier.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Really late comment to this post (just found your site-- love it!), but I just had to say I saw this bag/arm writing noted in a Japanese magazine around the time it happened. It was in more of an "aww, flatted" note than a "WTF is she doing?" note. It makes sense in the context of what she calls her fans. (Though, yeah, not sure why one is "small" and one is "little").

    I think if you're looking for an easy way to "translate" English to Japanese without committing to a decade of study, spelling things out in katakana is a pretty safe bet.

    ReplyDelete