Blog Archives

Chef George at POL KIRI – by  GEORGE BRAINE When I travel around Sapporo, in Japan, I keep an alert eye for English wording that appear on shop signs because they often make no sense. The syntax and semantics are intriguing, but they do provide me a with few delightful minutes of speculation, wondering what on earth they mean. My favorite is “Freaky Wardrobe Coffee”. Now, I ask myself, why is the wardrobe freaky? Is the wardrobe in the coffee shop? Does the shop sell coffee or wardrobes and coffee? Finally, dying with curiosity, I went there one day, and, passing a sign that asked “Are you freaky?”, found it to be a retro 1960s place, which served average coffee but overpriced coffee, where young women came to linger and take photos of the displayed artifacts. The manager could not explain how they came upon the name. Perhaps to sound ...