Elfstalker wrote:
I saw a t-shirt at Anime Expo last year; it was in kanji that read, 'I have no idea what this t-shirt says.' I found that amusing.
Ah, I thought I'd get some useful info by being a smart troll here. Thank you. May I use this bit of info in a chapter that I and a colleague are writing on urban legends dealing with foreignness?
ULs about people wearing embarrassing clothing are a lively genre. Nathaniel Hawthorne (perhaps because he wrote a novel based on a similar premise) got told several of these when he visited England, of which the funniest is the American who bought a nice woolen shawl, then wore it all over London with the tag still attached: ‘PERFECTLY CHASTE 15/S’ ('Certainly a moderate valuation of perfect chastity,' Nattie boy commented).
More commonly, it's a set of Chinese characters copied from a restaurant menu and knitted onto a sweater, which translate to "Nice dish. Very cheap."
Lately the legends have come to focus on Americans who insist on having Chinese or Japanese characters tattooed on them. My favorite (apocryphal, alas) has to do with the college student who asked a cynical Japanese-American tattoo artist to put the kanji for “strength” and “honor” on his chest. He (allegedly) emerged from the session with “small penis” indelibly written on his skin. “I think I’m helping my fellow man by labeling all the stupid people in the world,” the tattoo artist supposedly explained. “It’s not a crime, it’s a public service.”
Perhaps the t-shirt seller was a kindred soul.
Some of words I cannot read 
