A Japanese aquarium's lumpsuckers have settled on the head of an actor famous for playing a shogun.

Some viewers thought of Edo-period executions. Others proposed sinking a Matsuken reef to attract more fish.

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Spotted on Japanese social media:

A cat in Japan yowls nonstop if there's no lettuce in the house. Only fresh outer leaves will do. Cabbage is refused.

Lettuce prices shot up, so the owner went store to store hunting for a cheaper head.

Owner vs. cat. Winner: cat.

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Spotted on Japanese social media:

A tennis coach once explained the ladder to a student: the sand on the road is you, this pebble is me, that boulder is a pro in Japan, that star is Kei Nishikori, and the sun is Federer.

The student: "I'm sand, but I'll keep trying."

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締まっていこう (shimatte ikō), "let's keep it tight," is the rally cry a baseball catcher yells to the fielders.

Three grannies at a hot spring gave their team a very rude name. Someone replied with exactly that cry. The pun survives in English. The ballpark doesn't.

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Spotted on Japanese social media:

A man in Texas once told Japanese users: "I'll pay for your flight... we'll eat the big meat and you can swim in the big pool."

Months later, their replies talked him out of a trip to Prague. He went to Japan instead.

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Two boys got scolded at a Japanese hot spring for a potty word. Three grannies behind them quietly one-upped it.

By the end of the replies, someone had turned it into a three-line life motto. Another person adopted it. The author told them not to.

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Spotted on Japanese social media:

Someone on a mountain in Japan felt eyes on them and braced for a bear.

It was a cat, staring. One reply, in the cat's voice: "Child of man, why have you entered this mountain?"

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Spotted on Japanese social media:

A knitter in Japan says two lines come up every time: "You're so good with your hands, I could never" and "You should sell these!" Six years in, still no good comeback.

One reply: "I just go 'ahaha' and get through it."

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Translation note: 転がす (korogasu) means "to roll" or "to tip over." It also means handling someone so skillfully they never notice.

So a reply to the upside-down yen stickers saying the key is to 転がす your husband meant both: manage him well, and flip him into ¥.

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Spotted on Japanese social media:

At a campsite in Japan, the people at the next site asked to borrow some soy sauce. One camper poured them about a third of a paper cup.

A loaded salad came back as thanks. The neighbor turned out to be a chef who runs a restaurant in Kamakura.

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Flip the yen sign upside down and it looks like the kanji for "husband."

One commenter's mother used to explain what that means: a husband doesn't need to come home at all, as long as the money does.

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Spotted on Japanese social media:

Someone in Japan opened the round cookie tin to get their sewing kit out, and found it full of actual cookies.

Their reaction: "Is this a glitch?!" A reply from abroad: "This is a thing in Japan too?!"

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Spotted on Japanese social media:

The story goes: washing machines in rural China kept breaking because people washed potatoes in them. A Japanese maker added a warning label. Haier made a machine for potatoes.

A reply: "We don't wash potatoes in washing machines. Only octopus."

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A reply I translated: "Reminds me of Kabu agare!" ("Kabu, go up!")

株 (stocks) and 蕪 (turnip) are both read kabu. In 1998, Japan's prime minister held up a white turnip while talking about stock prices and said exactly that.

In English, he's urging a turnip to rise.

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Police in Japan hand out daikon radishes for road safety. The campaign is called 大根絶: daikon (radish) + konzetsu (eradication), sharing the kanji 根, "root."

English has the same overlap. Radish and eradicate both come from Latin radix, root.

The pun survives translation.

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Spotted on Japanese social media:

Tokyo stands left on escalators, Osaka stands right. Every morning at Tokyo's Haneda Airport, sleepy passengers off flights from Osaka still stand right.

One reply: "We don't follow local rules. Majority wins, and this crowd is all from Osaka."

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Police in rural Japan handed drivers daikon radishes. The flyer asks whoever eats one to bring up traffic safety at dinner.

One reply: "Our taxes turned into daikon, which turned into traffic safety."

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Spotted on Japanese social media:

Someone typed "as is" into an electronic medical chart in Japan. The autocomplete suggestion: a line from a 90s hit love song about stealing someone away.

A reply: "Fine, as long as it steals the illness away."

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Spotted on Japanese social media:

A man in Japan was supposed to take out the trash and walk the dog. His wife posted a photo of him heading out with the trash bag, and the dog left behind, staring at his back.

He came back, washed his hands, and took the dog out at a run.

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One reply mentions a "G" crawling out of a hotel pamphlet.

G stands for ゴキブリ, cockroach. Plenty of people in Japan would rather not type the full word, so one letter does the job.

I translated it as a cockroach, which is accurate. What gets lost is the flinch.

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