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ShaChris23's avatar

Help me translate this Japanese label? It's an incense box?

Asked by ShaChris23 (318points) June 12th, 2012

Hi all… I feel rather silly to ask, but could anyone help translate, maybe just summarize, this Japanese label for me?

I received this box of incense as a gift. I have NO CLUE what the box is saying or what the material is made out of. I don’t respond well to certain scents.

Thank you very much for any help!!!

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4 Answers

geeky_mama's avatar

This might come across as…terse, but I’m taking a bit of umbrage with the way you’ve phrased your request. You see, what you’re asking for isn’t a “silly” request.. you’re asking for a free service.
Like me going to a doctor friend and asking for them to write me a prescription without offering to pay.. You are asking for something free that other people pay for.. Japanese -> English translation is typically provided as a paid service.

That said – I’ll give you an off-the-cuff guess without cracking my dictionaries. Maybe some other Jelly who reads Japanese even better than me will wander by and feel even more charitable.

There isn’t really much helpful information to be had from these labels. There is nothing that lists the materials/ingredients. The images you numbered as 1 and 3 are simply boilerplate warnings:
– Don’t place lit incense near flammable materials
– Take sufficient care when burning..
– Consult a physician if irritation occurs to your body.. Blah blah blah.

If you’ve ever used incense before – you already know this stuff.

The image labeled 2 is all marketing. The largest text reads: “Nokiba”—which isn’t a translatable word per se..

The rest of the text merely says that it’s 優しい香り (yasashi kaori) ..a gentle fragrance…and I caught the kanji for plum (梅) ..so might have a scent of plum blossoms or wood… And the name of the company (far left side) is Matsu-something. .. and if mentions the smoke will be white?

Based on the Nokiba clue I googled and found that Nokiba is a Japanese incense scent essentially called “Moss Garden” in English.

Does your box look like this one? If so..you can get details from Amazon on the content.

Tons of info on different ingredients can be found here

ShaChris23's avatar

Thank you geeky mama. Yes, the box looks exactly like that. Thank you very much for your time and patience. I checked the ingredients and they’re all safe and good to use now.

I do in fact feel silly asking for a translation of an incense box—in a place where people come to ask real questions. I didn’t realize that my wording came off as offensive, casually phrased, putting people down, negating their contribution, or sneaking in a question that requires a paid professional service, etc. In any case if that was how my question came across, I apologize for the offense. I didn’t mean it.

geeky_mama's avatar

Your wording wasn’t offensive. And that’s not what I said in my response either. I wasn’t expecting an apology from you.

After I went back and read a few of your other posts I realized that perhaps you are not a native speaker of English and so perhaps that’s why your choice of words struck me as not quite right. Your English is otherwise so excellent that I’d have never guessed…but your questions about grammatical phasing and American culture are what clued me in.

I simply wanted to point out that what you were asking for didn’t equate as a “silly” request.
When my kids make a “silly” request it’s for something goofy or fun..like pancakes for dinner or letting them wear a costume to play around the house.
A “silly” request in my book doesn’t require effort and should be FUN.

For future reference I’d phrase something like this as: “a small favor” rather than a “silly request”...but it could be argued either way to be honest.

And FWIW, the questions on this site really do run the gamut of all sorts of things—and your question is a “real’ as they get. It’s not silly (in the sense of unimportant or trivial) at all.

ShaChris23's avatar

Thank you geeky mama.

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