Topic: Can somebody who can read japanese give a hand?

[Raul CB750K1]

Can anybody say what this tank script says?


(then I would explain why)

[Magpie]

I'll send the pic to my son in Japan and see if he can tell us.
Cheers,
Cliff.

[Raul CB750K1]

I'll send the pic to my son in Japan and see if he can tell us.
Cheers,
Cliff.

Domo Arigato!!!  :-)

[Magpie]

Here's what my son said:
As for your friends bike...it doesnt really have any "meaning" at all. It is called an "ATAJI", which is when they take the characters and arrange them by their pronunciation to make a new word that doesn't really exist.

From what I can tell you would pronounce the word ADORUFU, is that close to your friend's name? Anyways, to break it down into the different meanings I will give you a few examples of words that use these characters.

1) "A" - Akogi / ruthlessness, harshness, greed, meanness, ruthless, harsh, greedy, mean, hardhearted

motonomokuAmi / to lose all that one has gained, to go back to one's start

Aho / foolish, silly, stupid, a fool, an idiot, a blockhead, a stupid, an ass, a jerk, a moron

Asura / Asura is the guardian deity of the Buddhism which likes fights)

2) "DO" - DOryoku / effort, exertion, endeavor

3) "RU" - RUri / lapis lazuli, sky blue, azure

4) "FU" (also pronounced HO) - means "sail" like the sail on a sail boat.


Anyways, that's about as best I can do. Maybe send that off to your friend and see what they say. Maybe they should ask who told them about it what they had in mind when the chose the certain characters, or if they even knew the meaning at all. Most times people just check the sounds and randomly pick characters they think look cool.

Cliff.

[sangyo soichiro]

It means he got a "C" in Japanese class.  

Did he mean it to be 'Oh work hard and you can sail to the sky' or something like that?
 

[BobbyR]

I will ask at work, we have mostly Japanese working there. My boss did a few for me.

[Raul CB750K1]

I will ask at work, we have mostly Japanese working there. My boss did a few for me.

Allright Bobby, I'll wait for your input and then I will unveil the secret. Please, don't give him any of the responses here as not to bias his answer.

[BobbyR]

Ok, It translates to English this way starting from the top character:

Oh!!!   (A)
Effort  (Do)
Color Sapphire (Ru)
Sail (Hu)

Now to them it is gibberish. Having said that since they can write my name using sounds and another janaopene can pronounce it. They may have sounded out something in Spanish so it may make no sense to me either. Three College educated Japanesse engineers concur on the translation. 
 

[Raul CB750K1]

Last june I was visiting a classic car&bike fair when I saw in one of the stands, the bike pictured below.


I was hooked on the works of Shinya Kimura since I saw him in the "Biker Build-off" episode, and that bike seemed like one of his bikes, and it had a spanish plate!!!  I couldn't imagine how one of those bikes could have ended in Spain, so I was going to ask around whose the bike was until I saw somebody wearing a "Kimura" sweat shirt. That would have been too much coincidence for one day, so I introduced myself to the man, told him how much I liked Kimura's bikes, and asked about the bike.


The bike story is very interesting. The hardest part was to convince Kimura to make a bike for him. The man had to travel to Japan and meet Kimura in the flesh. Then he had to put money down and Kimura started building the bike. As per his words, "when you get into this type of thing, you don't ask how much will it be, nor can you object when you are asked for money".

The bike was finished and sent to....... US, and from there, to Spain. Something like if Kimura is not a registered bike builder in Japan, but he is in US. Transportation accounted for a big part of the total price, as the bike was sent airmail, not boat.


The man asked Kimura to write his name in the tank, but he admitted he didn't have the foggiest whether it said so or not. I used to have a japanese friend and offered to ask about the script. Sent him a couple of mails but never got a return. I even wrote him a letter, just in case he had changed his email address. Still, no answer. I'm fearing the worst, but I'll deal with that later.

That's when I decided to ask for help here, and I have to say, have found the info I was looking for.


The man's name is......

"Adolfo" -spanish for Adolph

and he has some other jewels such a MV Agusta America and a Kawasaki Z1 Rickman, that he has always owned. Quite a character that Adolfo!!!




Thanks Magpie and Bobby for your help, I'll send Adolfo a link to this thread.