One of the pleasures of living in Japan is the renewed appreciation of English it instills. I routinely get the chance to see my native tongue in a completely different light. Admittedly English has plenty of innate grammar and spelling eccentricities -- most I don't even notice. Though unique letter substitutions and unusual sentence structures have become a little less common in Japan, I wonder why so many English phrases still elude 'Spellcheck' before appearing on tee shirts, signboards and paper pamphlets. But thank goodness they do!
We found this little treasure at a take-out food shop en route to the subway station. We were rushing to catch a train but had to stop and snap. It took me a few seconds to process its meaning. What on earth is "tost" salad? Salad sandwich? Salad with toast? Croutons on top? And then it dawned on me. Maybe this abbreviated version of 'tossed' was meant to grab attention but it did not really stand out enough to do the trick. Maybe it worked better graphically. Maybe it was a simple oversight (note the correct spelling in the descriptive sentence below). To someone somewhere this peculiar little word made all the sense in the world. Once I realized that it rhymes with "lost" it did for me too.
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