Stalker

Smoking laws in Japan don't make much sense to me - for example, you can still smoke inside of a McDonalds, but when you are outside in public they are strict about 'smoking areas' which are often fenced off, so all these smokers are huddled together in a cage surrounding a lone silver ash box. Weird.

Anyway, this is a picture of a sign on a street ashtray outside of a Family Mart in Ginza a few days ago. Signs like the one above are supposed to make smokers aware of the people close to them. But as usual, the translation is quite interesting.




My smoke is enveloping that man over there. Stalker. But what on earth does 'stalker' mean? Is the smoker a stalker? Or is the smoke metaphorically a stalker? Or perhaps 'that man over there' is a stalker? Who knows. Just another fine example of 'Engrish' in Japan.