Ichiban Not Able to Read Kappo Restaurant Menu?

[Comtar]

So during the date with Sa-chan in the beginning chapter. Ichiban says he is not able to read the menu ant the Kappo Restaurant and they both have difficulty ordering leading to a conversation about pronunciation being added to the menu.

Can someone explain why this they both are not able to read a Japanese restaurant menu being Japanese? I can’t find a clear answer. Is it a dialect thing? That’s the most I’ve been able to find online is that there are different dialects and ways that kanji is written because of it. Is this why?

Genuinely curious about it from a lore and Japanese culture standpoint.

[Mixedbeats18]

I guess kinda old Shakespere english
Lie low - To hide so you will not be caught by someone.
Good riddance - To be happy when someone or something is gone.
Green-eyed monster - Jealousy -> This one isnt used anymore
Night owl - A person who stays up and is active late into the night.
As dead as a doornail - Dead beyond any doubt.

[r0ttingplague]

there are three japanese letters, kanji, hiragana and katakana. The owner of the restaurant mention it uses the old japanese pronunciation so maybe they uses letters that arent in time with the way they use letters now

[Asuterisuku]

Put simply, Kanji is hard, even for people who live with it all the time; the same word can have many different ways to pronounce it based on the context and in what order the character appears - The situation in question goes on to have Saeko using the incorrect readings.

Part of it is due to the restaurant itself having very traditionalist values and using the kanji in ways that those who grew up on Modern Japanese would be foreign to.

[Super Tramp]

Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Not all Japanese people understand all three written words. Most likely that.

[Super Tramp]

Originally posted by r0ttingplague:

there are three japanese letters, kanji, hiragana and katakana. The owner of the restaurant mention it uses the old japanese pronunciation so maybe they uses letters that arent in time with the way they use letters now

Lol, you beat me.

[Asuterisuku]

Originally posted by Super Tramp:

Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Not all Japanese people understand all three written words. Most likely that.

It's worth noting that Saeko also reads Chinese, which is ALL Kanji, no Kana.

[mimizukari]

Originally posted by Comtar:

So during the date with Sa-chan in the beginning chapter. Ichiban says he is not able to read the menu ant the Kappo Restaurant and they both have difficulty ordering leading to a conversation about pronunciation being added to the menu.

Can someone explain why this they both are not able to read a Japanese restaurant menu being Japanese? I can’t find a clear answer. Is it a dialect thing? That’s the most I’ve been able to find online is that there are different dialects and ways that kanji is written because of it. Is this why?

Genuinely curious about it from a lore and Japanese culture standpoint.

Kanji is hard even for people who live in Japan, there's over 8000 and some are rarely used. The fact he can't read shrimp either just means he just isn't well versed in kanji at all which kinda makes sense if he spent all his time including growing up as a yakuza thug.

[surroundedsita]

Old Japanese was written using man'yōgana, using Chinese characters as syllabograms. It is not written in Katakana, Kanji, or Hiragana, nor is it even taught anymore. It is similar to modern Kana which is why, even if you werent taught, you could probably have a rough understanding of old japanese if you know Kana. That would explain why Sa-Chan could understand something like "Shrimp" from the menu.

[Metal Izanagi]

Old-school "formal" Japanese can be a pain to read even for people who can read the other character types. Ichiban is an orphan who grew up as a yakuza thug and then went to prison for a decade. Dude has no education in how to read old Japanese so for him it just looks like how Japanese characters look to people who can only read English.

[Comtar]

Originally posted by r0ttingplague:

there are three japanese letters, kanji, hiragana and katakana. The owner of the restaurant mention it uses the old japanese pronunciation so maybe they uses letters that arent in time with the way they use letters now

This is good information! Thank you!

[Nineteen Hundred]

Originally posted by Asuterisuku:

Originally posted by Super Tramp:

Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Not all Japanese people understand all three written words. Most likely that.

It's worth noting that Saeko also reads Chinese, which is ALL Kanji, no Kana.

While Japanese and Chinese technically use a lot of the same characters, the *way* they're used is completely different. It'd be like an English speaker trying to pick their way through written Portuguese

[parent child bowl]

Originally posted by Nineteen Hundred:

Originally posted by Asuterisuku:

It's worth noting that Saeko also reads Chinese, which is ALL Kanji, no Kana.

While Japanese and Chinese technically use a lot of the same characters, the *way* they're used is completely different. It'd be like an English speaker trying to pick their way through written Portuguese

Portuguese is cute while written. Since I learned spanish, I can understand it. When spoken, it becomes the child of Satan though.

[Soushi [SSRB]]

Originally posted by Comtar:

Can someone explain why this they both are not able to read a Japanese restaurant menu being Japanese? I can’t find a clear answer. Is it a dialect thing?

It's a Japanese thing. Native JP speakers regularly struggle to read some not-so-often-used kanji. Kappo Restaurant in question uses many such obscure kanjis in their menu (with their emphasys on tradition), hence you get the scene, where native speakers are struggling with it.

[Kapika96]

There are a lot of Japanese kanji. Probably like 50k+ or something. Only around 1200 or so are used regularly, with most people not learning more than 2000.

So obscure kanji, like those used for traditional food items, wouldn't be known by people that don't regularly eat that kind of food. As for Ichiban not being able to read shrimp, that's likely just because it's not often written in kanji. A lot of the time it's just written in hiragana instead, so it's not too surprising he's not familiar with the kanji for it. Especially given it probably wasn't on the menu when he was in prison all that often.

It's common with names too. Can be hard to tell how it's pronounced just from the kanji alone. It's normal practice to provide hiragana when filling in names on any kind of form as well as the kanji for that reason. Hiragana is always pronounced the same so there's not really going to be errors, plus there are only 40ish characters, so people know them all. If the restaurant updates their menus that's probably what they'd do, just add hiragana alongside the kanji.