That's what I (eventually) figured they were trying to say, because of the 単に.

私の会社は隔週で土曜日が休みだ。
Every other Saturday is a day off in my company.

This sentence kinda scares me. Is this considered lenient in Japan? Are they talking a normal 9 - 5 kinda job makes them work every other Saturday??

本当に怖いですね。（０＿o）

遺跡の壁に宇宙人のような格好をした人が描かれている。
A person who looks like an alien is drawn on the ruined wall.

lolololololololol. This sentence in English just cracks me up

駅の階段で転んだ。とても痛かった。
I feel down the stairs at the railway station. It hurt a lot.

The sentence, with the very dry, factual reading made it sound like a librarian trying to strike conversation at a bar. I won't be forgetting this sentence anytime soon.

悲しい事は早く忘れよう。
Let's forget sad events quickly.

Do it. All of them. Now.

And they saved the best for last...

アマゾンのジャングルは長い間人間を拒んできた。
The Amazon jungle has been rejecting humans for a long time.

lololololollololol. I just picture the jungle coming to life and totally denying humans entry.

This one is more disgusting than funny but if you listen to the pronunciation of 都合 on the card that says

明日 会いたいんですが、都合はどうですか。/明日は都合が悪いです。
Tomorrow, I would like to see you. Is it convenient for you? / Tomorrow is inconvenient.

Then you can actually picture the spit flying out of the guy's mouth when he says 都合... it's really nasty and it makes me gag every time I hear the card...

mezbup Wrote:私の会社は隔週で土曜日が休みだ。
Every other Saturday is a day off in my company.

This sentence kinda scares me. Is this considered lenient in Japan? Are they talking a normal 9 - 5 kinda job makes them work every other Saturday??

There are some that roatate sat sun off, then sun mon off.

there are even worse gigs that just give for example 6-8 days off a months, and they are complete roatated. So you could work like 9 days straigh with one day off, then five days, etc.

Here is a good one-not KO though

女​の人​は夜​きれいに見​える。​

OK I have to bring this topic up again for by far the funniest sentence I've seen in a textbook. Although that's not entirely accurate; the original sentence is not funny but nrg1701 made a slight mistake when entering the sentence into the shared spreadsheet and changed it to something IMO hilarious. This is from Kanji in Context book 2.

(not to single you out for nrg1701. You did an awesome job entering so many sentences!)

So here's the sentence I read:

運動会や修学旅行などの学校行事では、まず第一に児童や政党の安全に配慮しなければならない。

"In Soviet Russia...", right?

(actual sentence is supposed to be 運動会や修学旅行などの学校行事では、まず第一に児童や生徒の安全に配慮しなければならない。I've changed it on the spreadsheet).

本人の死亡原因の 1位はガンだ。約3割の人がガンで死ぬ。
The No. 1 cause of death in Japan is cancer. About 30% of the population die of cancer.

While I know cancer is no laughing matter, is the cancer prevalence really that high?!?!

Nii87 Wrote:While I know cancer is no laughing matter, is the cancer prevalence really that high?!?!

Yes it unfortunately is. From wikipedia: "Cancer caused about 13% of all human deaths in 2007" and deaths from cancer are relatively more frequent in advanced countries. Cancer is the leading cause of death in Japan and that number seems to be correct.

http://www.japanfs.org/en_/japan/population.html

Nii87 Wrote:本人の死亡原因の 1位はガンだ。約3割の人がガンで死ぬ。
The No. 1 cause of death in Japan is cancer. About 30% of the population die of cancer.

While I know cancer is no laughing matter, is the cancer prevalence really that high?!?!

WHO spreadsheet for 2002 : http://www.who.int/entity/healthinfo/sta...imates.xls which says that of the approx 973,200 deaths in Japan in 2002, 308,100 (about 31%) were due to some form of cancer. For comparison the US was about 23%, UK 25%. (Whether you consider cancer to be #1 or not depends on whether you lump all the cardiovascular diseases into one item in the same way as you lump all the cancers together as one top level cause; if you do then there were just slightly more of them.)

Supposedly cancer rates among Japanese-Americans is even higher than Japanese too. I know from my family (small sample, I know), it's well over 50% for my family. They were all in their 80s and 90s, but it's still a little creepy!

http://www.springerlink.com/content/l511v03532h7h224/

That's all I could find with 5 minutes of internet searching.

It's not that surprising; developed nations have virtually eliminated most of the diseases that used to kill lots of people (like TB, polio, smallpox, etc.) -- everyone has to die of something, and when you're no longer dying of communicable diseases, you're pretty much left with cancer and heart disease.

Thanks for the insight people. I didn't realise the chances of getting it are so high =/

EDIT: Reading some of the comments above, it seems that 30% of *deaths* are cancer related, not that 30% of the population die from cancer. The KO2001 translation is worded a little differently, and suggests 30% of people will get cancer fullstop.

Nii87 Wrote:EDIT: Reading some of the comments above, it seems that 30% of *deaths* are cancer related, not that 30% of the population die from cancer. The KO2001 translation is worded a little differently, and suggests 30% of people will get cancer fullstop.

There's not that much difference, really. This PDF from some arm of the Japanese government says (table 7) that a male Japanese baby born in 2008 has statistically a 29.98% chance that when they eventually die it will be from cancer.

Nii87 Wrote:EDIT: Reading some of the comments above, it seems that 30% of *deaths* are cancer related, not that 30% of the population die from cancer. The KO2001 translation is worded a little differently, and suggests 30% of people will get cancer fullstop.

Obviously no one knows the future so we can't know how many people will die from cancer in the future. But the current trend is an increase of the proportion of deaths by cancer so it's not unreasonable to fear that more than 30% of people are going to die from a cancer.

On the other hand, maybe at some point, we'll have a cure for most forms of cancers and that number is going to be lower.

Nii87 Wrote:EDIT: Reading some of the comments above, it seems that 30% of *deaths* are cancer related, not that 30% of the population die from cancer.

How is that different? Since 100% of the population will die at some point, saying that 30% of deaths are due to cancer sounds to me like the same thing as saying that 30% of the population will die of cancer (in the sense of using statistics to more or less predict the future).

I don't think this statistic can be taken as incredibly alarming without knowing the average age these people are dying. If 30% of deaths are cancer and life expectancy is 50 years old, that's a problem. But Japan's life expectancy is much higher than that, and it's really not that alarming if 30% of people in their 80's are dying of cancer.

「この空港は市内にあるから、夜間は使えない。」
Because this airport is situated in the city, it is not available at night.

Haha, what?

Because it would be too noisy for residents?

SammyB Wrote:Because it would be too noisy for residents?

Because the city would be too dangerous at night.

Hmm, I guess you really can't do anything about noise but you'd think it would be safe to fly at night (with GPS, runway lights, lights on tall buildings, etc).

FooSoft Wrote:「この空港は市内にあるから、夜間は使えない。」
Because this airport is situated in the city, it is not available at night.

Haha, what?

That has to do with Narita shutting down at night because of big fights with locals in the area.