I once bought a mug from a shop selling Japanese stuff, as a present for a friend. It was only when I got it home that I realised that there was a Panel of one set of Japanese characters covering up some intimate contact between other Japanese characters like those above. It was no use as a present and because it had no handle, I used it for washing brushes until I dropped it. Not being too hot on the detailed etiquette of Japanese high society, I am hoping that there are no such shenanigans displayed in this picture. Reminds me of the recent story about the Max Planck Forschung magazine which asked for some attractive Chinese writing for its cover and actually got something similar to posters for a strip joint in Hong Kong.
I once had to typeset some Mandarin for a Powerpoint presentation. We had the text translated by the University, sent back at reasonable size and then scanned in and converted to vectors so we could move it around the slides. I am pretty sure that it was hilarious to the final audience but I shall never know for certain. With Google Language Tools it is very easy to produce absolute gibberish.
For instance a certain English phrase becomes this :
我知道你所有，並將一段時間堅持無限幽默的無所事事。
but returns to this when translated back :
I know you all, and will insist on an unlimited period of time doing nothing funny.
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