We’ve all heard the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words”. No shit! It took me 33 years and one trip to an alien country completely detached from the English language to appreciate that. I made my first trip to Japan a couple of months ago. 1 in 20 restaurants (and that too by a pretty lenient estimate) in Japan have a menu in English. Its all Japanese language and pictures of plates of food. Well, if you’re adventurous with your food as I am, thats like playing Russian roulette. You see a picture, order stuff and have no clue what it is, till it turns up on your table. But then, if you’re kinda conventional with your selection of food, and Indian vegetarian at that, chances are you will try to locate an Indian restaurant in any part of the world. So did an associate of mine I was traveling with. We ended up one evening in an Indian restaurant in downtown Tokyo. The restaurant had an interesting card they distributed along with the menu to indicate how “hot” we wanted our Indian curry. Take a look at the picture below. It just blew me away! And here I was thinking language is a problem. A picture does speak a thousand words!!
That said, if you are a frequent traveler, seeing pictures of stuff you can’t carry with you on a flight is nothing new. Stuff like pictures of no sharp knives, no scissors, no gels, no aerosols, no nothin’ really. For me, approaching the security check, seeing the same kind of pictures over and over again at all airports is downright depressing. But hey, see the Japanese folks getting creative and replacing “a thousand pictures” with some witty words. If nothing, it did bring a smile to a bored traveler’s face!
So, which side are you on - pictures or words?
