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Sorry, Japanese Only
Hey English speakers, there's nothing for you guys at that website
- URL: Unknown
- Location: Japanese personal websites hosted on Geocities and other places
- Date: Since late 1990s
- Facebook: Unknown
- Twitter: Unknown
- Known For:
Summary
"Sorry, Japanese only" is a notice that Japanese website creators post on personal websites or fansites to tell speakers of the English language that there is no real content in English. The notice is worded in almost the exact same way. These notices tend to appear on various pages hosted on the Japanese Geocities and on other fansites with other hosting methods. These notices are very common on pages created in the late 1990s. In many cases the notice is the only actual English-language sentence posted on the website.
Curiously, Americans do not put "Sorry, English only" in Spanish on their websites, and French do not put "Sorry, French only" in English on their websites. Japanese people had the need to address English-speakers (but not French speakers or Chinese speakers) and apologize for only having content in Japanese.
Origins
The English language is the dominant language on the internet, and in the beginning years it was even more dominant. Many Japanese users did not intend to develop English pages on their personal sites. However, many English-speaking people have taken a liking to Japanese popular culture, such as anime and video games, and attempted to peruse Japanese websites looking for English content. Many Japanese websites use English words for emphasis, for mere decoration, or to describe English titles of works, but do not actually have substantial English-language content intended for foreigners. To address this, many Japanese personal website authors placed notices saying "Sorry, Japanese only" to tell English speakers that there is no English language content. The notice is worded in almost the exact same way in the various personal websites and fanpages.
Current status
Not as common anymore in newer pages. In Japan Geocities is still up, so many of these pages are still up.
Images
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 Complete with 1990s style animated gifs... (The Japanese text says "Japan (country) Only" when it should say "Japanese (language) only)... |
 Mister Smith, I am soo sorry for having everything on my personal page in my language! |
 Sometimes the notice is worded differently - here it's not perfect, but at least it makes it clear that it's the language... |
 At least he has the decency of showing the link to Babelfish... |
 So now you have to know Japanese AND love penguins? |
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 Sometimes it appears in the title instead of the website body |
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 It's really tiny, but it's there! |
 But, but the documentation you are citing is in English, sir! |
 Rize Haruka's site |
Related Pages
External Links
