N.Y. man’s Japanese T-shirt announces “I am not Sato,” we couldn’t agree more

Casey Baseel

Sep 17, 2014

NS 10

Among RocketNews24’s bilingual writing team, you won’t find a single person who hasn’t, at some point, linguistically crammed their foot in their mouth (personally, I know I’ve gotten my knee and most of my thigh past my pearly whites on at least three separate occasions). So while we can definitely appreciate the humor involved in a strange language screw-up, we know we’re not immune to such things ourselves, and that the rest of the world can weird up its Japanese just as often as Japan stumbles over English.

Case in point: this man spotted napping on the subway in the U.S., who felt the need to inform his fellow passengers who can read Japanese that he is, in fact, not Mr. Sato.

The picture was snapped by Twitter user Gen Shin. Gen was out for a ride under the streets of New York when he noticed he was sharing the car with someone whose shirt stated, in no uncertain terms, Watashi wa Sato de wa arimasen, or, “I am not Sato.”

Now, it’s important to remember that you can’t always tell someone’s ethnic background at first glance. For example, my skin is so pale I have to buy sunscreen in bulk, but I’m actually half Arabic.

It’s possible that the sleepy subway passenger’s father or grandfather is Japanese. Are there really that many people, though, who look at the dude and immediately assume that he not only has a Japanese last name, but also that it’s Sato? Is this such a common occurrence that the time savings from not having to verbally explain his non-Sato-ness are such a benefit that it’s worth building his wardrobe around?

There’s one more question the T-shirt begs, which is if he’s not Mr. Sato, then who is? As longtime RocketNews24 readers can tell you, Mr. Sato is one of our intrepid Japanese correspondents. He’s…

…beautiful…