Bread shop

This is where customers go to enjoy regular price increases.

Engrish, cool

so it's come to this......

A bakery with an unusual name in Isezaki.

this could be TRUTH in advertising after you eat their food!

Wouldn't call it "Engrish", actually, since it is based on French. Something like, "talking bread"? Will be interesting to see the comments of our native French-speaking readers.

Cheers,

Soon to be seen on engrish.com

Which one is funnier, the Japanese French in the picture, or the public thinking it is English...?

It is in fact French, as mentionned above. It is not grammatical as it's just two words displayed side by side but it also doesn't have any spelling mistakes. I think it's acutally one of the better uses of foreign words I've seen in Japan.

Pain: bread Parler: to talk

Certainly conjures up the right images for a bakery.

Fenrig

So if the proprietor had chosen English and not French then it would have been an equally nonsensical name/phrase like, "Let's Talk Bread!" Sorry, but it's gibberish to me and certainly doesn't conjure up any images that makes me want to walk into this store. If I saw "Pain Parler" I'd be on my way to Donq in no time...

What is even more amusing than the failure of various posters to realise that the Japanese use the French word "pain" (pronounced "pan") to describe bread (read the katakana for Pete's sake...), is the cleverness of the person naming the bakery in the first place. Not only have they used an descriptive and alliterative choice of French words, they have also at the same time come up with a great pun in English.

Genius

It's just a mess up... 'Pain' is the spelling of bread in French, and as usual the Japanese messed it up and added English to the mix. Looks funny to anyone who has no knowledge of French... hell... it looks funny anyway, but it's not like they just randomly chose the word 'pain' and threw it in there.

Maybe they bought some of that infamous rice..??

smithinjapan - read the katakana... clearly they are NOT misspelling "Parlour" - they are correctly spelling "parler" - "to speak" in French. (as used in different form in the question "parlez vous Francais?")

The fact that it can also be read as you have mistakenly done is, as I said before, a work of genius

@USNinJapan2

There is actually a high-end bakery in the Philippines named "Bread Talk." Maybe the owners know each other?

Is it possible it has links to certain areas of Shinjuku? But, it's not as good as the Fook Qew Chinese restaurant.

Doh! I didn't even bother to read the sign properly myself. Both words are supposed to be French, as some posters have stated above.

Frontandcentre: Where did I say they were misspelling 'parlour'? I didn't even look at the second word and just concluded that they were misusing a French/English combination. Might be worse than your incorrect observation, but incorrect it is nonetheless. It's not a work of genius at all -- that would imply they INTENDED to have people so poorly look at their crappy sign. Go to engrish.com and you can see hundreds and hundreds of similarly poorly written signs... they are only 'genius' in your overanalysis of them. It would be like saying 'Calpis' is genius, or 'Poccari Sweat' (both for which the names have been changed in exports).

Basically, this sign is exactly as the quotation says: a place with an unusual name... one of many.

.

Go to engrish.com and you can see hundreds and hundreds of similarly poorly written signs... they are only 'genius' in your overanalysis of them. It would be like saying 'Calpis' is genius, or 'Poccari Sweat' (both for which the names have been changed in exports).

Completely irrelevant but keep trying.

smithinjapan - in your original comment you correctly observed that "pain" was French and that "as usual the Japanese messed it up and added English to the mix." If you were not referring to the word "Parler" as being English, what were you talking about and how am I incorrect? You seem to be a little confused...

...anyway, not to worry, whether an intentional English pun or not, it's an attention grabbing name, so it has certainly done its job, rather like the name "Feat of Clay" that I once saw used for a porcelain company!

This photo made me chuckle.

frontandcentre: "If you were not referring to the word "Parler" as being English, what were you talking about and how am I incorrect? You seem to be a little confused..."

You really ought to read things more clearly (says the person who didn't bother reading the sign in the first place). In my second post I fully admitted that I didn't even READ the second word in the sign carefully; it was YOU who jumped to the conclusion that I therefore meant something like 'Parlour', no? If I'm wrong, point out to me where I said 'parlour'. I DID indeed say that it was yet another example of them mixing English/French (another example is the oft romanized 'choux cream' -- pronounced 'shoe cream' here -- instead of 'choux creme' minus the accents), and then wrote my commenting admonishing myself for not looking more carefully, and saying you ought to do the same. The word 'parler' is of course not English, but as everyone has rightly pointed out, the dictionary form of the word 'speak'. I quite simply looked at the 'pain' part and drew the wrong conclusions about the second word. My bad.

Not me who's confused, my friend, clearly. Confusion would infer that I looked and misunderstood or could not differentiate, as you have done with my posts.

Anyway, take it easy. (and did you change the spelling in your handle?)

sarge: The photo is nothing special... personally, I like the curry shop chain called simply, 'T & A' with psychadelic colours on many of its shops awnings.

Sometimes I believe that these catchy names are purely lucky Japanese combinations, and other times I'm sure that there's a foreigner behind the scenes somewhere, coming up with names for things and chuckling to himself. There is a small bar/restaurant in a tiny back street of downtown Kyoto called "Cabbages & Condoms." And how about the bento box manufacturer "Lube Sheep?"

Very entertaining! The sign could also suggest that the establishment is an S&M club that will flog you with a stalk of wheat. Great photo JT. Some years ago there was a fish restaurant on Roppongi dori called Jus de Peche. In French we would read this as Juice of the fisherman. Never ate, or drank there.

Since I have a passing familiarity with French, this at least makes me laugh at what I presume is the intended play on words/pun. However, the "Foodium" in Shinagawa station still leaves me scratching my head as to what the person who created that name had in mind.

smithinjapan: personally, I like the curry shop chain called simply, 'T and A' with psychadelic colours on many of its shops awnings.

Are there pasties and tassles on the samosa? Just asking.

As the oncologists say, "no pan, no gan."

I thought only pirates could claim parler.

In Katsura, Kyoto, there is a pet show with the name POO - yes, without the H.

Sorry, I meant a 'pet shop' with the name POO without the H and there used to be a bakery in my neighborhood that sold 'hot bums' instead of 'hot buns' and now they sell 'sandwitches.'

yeah let's talk about bread

There's a real pain parlor up the street from my place - Taiwan-style foot massage. They'll have you howling in pain in no time!

Tangentially related: My favorite sign for an establishment is a pet grooming salon in Austin, Texas that goes by the name, "Doggy Styles".

Cheers,