(Humor) "Japanese Summer", to Kill "Mosquitoes"

Did someone say "Japanese Spring", a la "Arab Spring"?

While the "Sring" does not literally mean "spring" as in four seasons, there was a tweet I read yesterday which triggered my uncontrollable laugh. I suppose only Japanese or people who grew up with the particular TV commercial would laugh, but I thought I'd share it here.

The tweet said (in my liberal translation):

Well, they call it "Arab Spring", the uprising of people and toppling the regimes in Arab countries. If this is the beginning of a similar movement in Japan, we may call it "Japanese Summer" because it is summer now. But you know, we're all too familiar with that phrase "Japanese Summer" as in ...

"Kincho's Summer, Japanese Summer"
（金鳥の夏、日本の夏）

What's Kincho? 金鳥 characters mean "golden bird" (rooster). It is a trademark of an anti-mosquito incense coil made by a Japanese company (Dainihon Jochugiku Co. Ltd) that's been making the incense coils for 130 years.

I think it would be highly appropriate to use that phrase, which conjures up the image of this plant-based mosquito killing incense.

There would be many "mosquitoes" in the "Japanese Summer".

In the meantime in Egypt, the military looks set to declare the former Mubarak prime minister as the winner of the presidential election over the Muslim Brotherhood candidate. Both sides have claimed victory.

Tweet