Oishii Expressions
Creepy Cheese
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Oishii Expressions is a A7 one-page folded and thrice stapled mini containing a fun selection of Japanese phrases for when things aren’t going your way.
I picked up this zine at Festival of the Photocopier in February. I love bilingual zines and have a particular soft spot for Japanese. More importantly, I couldn’t resist the cheeky smile of the soy sauce fish!
Each of the six pages has a phrase written in hiragana, Japanese script, with the romaji (or Roman characters) transliteration. I thought this was a really cool feature which makes the zine accessible and useful for people with different levels of Japanese. As someone who understands hiragana, I enjoyed being able to read the zine in the original language as well.
The English translation is beneath my favourite part: the full colour illustrations of highly expressive sushi. The faces these critters pull demonstrate the meaning of the phrase just as well as the text. These sushi pals aren’t just your standard California roll either – I was really happy to see an onigiri rice ball!
If you’re keen on languages or adorable sushi characters, nab yourself a copy of Oishii Expressions.
This has been a guest zine review by J.E.M. Hast!