Short background story: My grandfather passed away recently, followed shortly thereafter by my grandmother. So last weekend I was back home in Louisiana helping sort through his clothes. I found his military duffle bag at the bottom of his closet. His war history: He was an Army Infantry Major and served 38 months overseas, first as a platoon leader and later as a battalion commander. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, including an oak leaf cluster, two Purple Hearts and the Philippine Liberation Ribbon with bronze star. He spent time in Fiji, New Zealand, Bougainville, New Georgia, and Solomon Islands and Manila. So, i decided i wanted the duffle bag. A few days later i found a small bag at the bottom of it:

Here is a bigger shot.

The apparent blood stains are creepy to say the least. Though i know blood dries black or dark when left... i'm not sure what a washed blood stain would look like, so i'm still not convinced it's blood, but it sure as hell looks like it to me.

Point of this post... i'd LOVE to have someone translate the writing on it for me:

Here is a higher res shot.

So far i've been told that the 2nd and 3rd characters from the top are pa n, katakana for bread and the last character is "Tai" (or "Fukuro"), the character for "bag" or "sack".

If anyone could give a full translation i'd really appreciate it! Interesting little piece of history i've got here.

Damnit! I was all excited that I still remembered some of the characters, and then you wrote that you already knew those

the 2nd and 3rd characters are Katakana, the 1st, 4th, and 5th are Kanji. That's all the info I can tell you If it hadn't been 3 years since my last Japanese class, I would email the thread to my sensei, but I don't know if she's still there. I liked Japanese, but it's so freaking hard.

Not wishing to sound stupid, but could it be a bag for storing bread? Like having little pots in the kitchen with Tea or Sugar or Coffee written on it?

That's possible. I remember the last time I was in a bloody knife fight after picking up some baguettes.

Anyway, I was actually thinking along the same lines. Like maybe it's a mail bag or something like that.

Hey, you've obviously never been to Greggs in Swinton Precinct then!

Well, there is a diner by me that changed their menus to omit the word "French." It's possible they may want to stab me for ordering french bread.

French Toast = All American Toast
French Fries = Idaho Fries
French Onion Soup = Crock of Onion Soup

Loren: I'm sorry for getting so off-topic

Loren: I'm sorry for getting so off-topic

/me peeks at the forum name, just to be sure...

Is there a such thing as "off topic" in the "Off Topic" forum?

Is there a such thing as "off topic" in the "Off Topic" forum?

If it'd be On Topic for one of the other forums?

/Michael

I know NOTHING about Japanese characters, but this got me searching. The only 2 stroke Kanji character that I found that looked like your character 4 was:

iri - suffix meaning, imbedded in; included; contained within

So - looks like you've got yourself a bloody bread bag, indeed!

Isn't somewhere in the forum rules that all threads must wonder widly offtopic at some point

This is what's written on the bag, if I'm not mistaken (changed from traditional vertical to horizontal)...



From left to right, repeating what some others have said, the characters are (pronunciations are in orange):

1) kanji - ten - "revolve, turn around, change"
2/3) katakana - pan - "bread"
4) kanji - nyuu - "enter, insert" however, I agree with Trs24 that it's probably using the kun reading "iri" meaning "contained within"
5) kanji - fukuro - "bag or sack"

Now my Japanese isn't the best, but I agree that it's obviously a bread bag. But the "ten" at the beginning kinda throws me. Maybe referring to keeping fresh bread in your bread bag?

I'll ask my sensei on Monday....

Hope this helps.

Maybe it was a bag that contained ten loaves of bread.

A Japanese MRI, maybe (for 10, of course)?

- trs

A Japanese MRI, maybe (for 10, of course)? [

Meal Ready to Ingest?

Or was the bread bag to hide their super-advanced 20th century style medical imaging equipment?

I think that it says

Kan Pan Ire Bukuro

which is Dried Bread Inside Sack, in the sense of "this is a sack containing dried bread rations".

So it was a bag of croutons.


Regards

Mark

So right you are! I just checked; looks like I mis-read the first kanji.

Also wasn't aware "fukuro" and "bukuro" both came out to the same kanji/meaning....

You learn something new every day...

Yes, the first character is the first half of kansou. Took me a while to see it - it's kind of hard to read in the photo, plus it's in an old style calligraphy (unsurprisingly). And I was trying to think of characters that could mean 'fresh' rather than 'dried'. Which if I'd thought a little more about what a soldier was likely to be carrying...doh.

Regards

Mark

Awesome. Thanks a lot guys. That does indeed seem to be the consensus on the meaning. Apparently the soldiers used the bags for carrying personal items rather than dried bread.

Especially after the bag was empty.