This one is really a hoot for the Japanese reader. Garney hasn't managed to find out how to write "exit" in Japanese (what? Marvel can't locate a single Japanese person in New York City to be a consultant?), so he has pieced together the Chinese character for "middle" (in Japanese pronounced "chuu" or "naka") with the katakana phonetic character for "o", followed by an extending bar, thus making it "oh". If the "oh" were written in a certain Chinese character, it would be a real word, "chuuoh" -- which unfortunately means "central", not "exit". What's funny about this is not only that it doesn't mean exit, but that you would never see "chuuoh" written this way. It's a little bit like writing "500" as "five 00". You just don't do it.

Not only does this not say "McDonald's" in Japanese, it doesn't even look like Japanese. Or Chinese. Or any language I've ever laid eyes on. Is this an alien language? Some extraterrestrial hamburger joint? Does Garney know something I don't?

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This page last updated February 18, 2003 . E-mail Tim