Wednesday, May 12, 2010

かまどか

kamadoka, a name for a chain store of Japanese bar.

100512I have to confess that I had a trouble to read this store signboard on treet. I was able to tell the first three kana, mainly b ased on the knowledge of the word かまど which means a traditional cooking stove, natually means a kitchen here, but I was not sure if the last character was "ya" or "ka". In this case, both may mean "a house", but the former is Japanese oriented word and the latter is Chinese oriented. Thus "kamado" matchs "ya" much better. Only by watching closely I was able to find out that there are roman letters come with this store name, and the correctly reading was not "ya".

As a store name, one has all the reasons to make up a word, as long as it is catching. The fact that it does not follow a common language rule may indeed well support that gole.