Not far away from Tokyo Midtown, in Roppongi, there’s an old shop that was turned into a shelter for vending machines selling drinks. There it is.

What is puzzling here is what is written in English. “Sand Sushi Salad Rice“. The majority of speakers of English who don’t understand Japanese will probably think that it was a place where people were selling sushi, salad, rice and… sand !?

Of course, Japanese people don’t eat sand with their sushi or their salads. Neither is there a sandman who brings sand to make children falling asleep. In fact, this “sand” is a contraction of “sandwich”, sandoitchi サンドイッチ in Japanese. It happens often that long words are abbreviated in Japanese. “sando サンド” is therefore often used for sandwich.

I however wonder how many foreigners who don’t know about the subtlety of Japanese language have looked at this shop with perplexity.