Insect warning sign at Kurama temple

On the way from honden of Kurama temple to okunoin there was a sign warning in japanese for various insect, including the big hornet, the habu snake (think it was), mukade and some other worms and stuff. Beside it was a sign of warning for a poisonous fungia, in English and japanese.

First of, why was the first sign not in English as well? Wouldnt it be om interest to non japanese to be aware of such insects? I didnt dare go any further as I didnt know about the others than those I mentioned.

I wore long pants and long shirt but again, they were to unknown to me. I have a picture of the sign if anyone is interested.

It is likely the mabushi sake. Habu snakes live only in Okinawa.

First of, why was the first sign not in English as well?

I can only guess: the person/organization in charge of setting it up did not think about foreigners, did not have the skills to create an English sign or did not think the effort of translation was worth the effort. After all, it seems you understood it despite the absence of English translations. Do all signs in your country come multilingual?

Ah, mabushi you are right.

Well I thought it would be that both signs were translated. At least someone would understand if five mukade came crawling through the woods. I could read hiragana and some kanji, otherwise I would probably have been freaked out by the pictures and the fact the sign was placed beside the other sign.

Have not seen such signs otherwhere though. Except for a giant hornet warning in Kanazawa and Nikko.

Here we go, a picture of the sign

http://oi65.tinypic.com/1497a4z.jpg

Hi,

I took a look at your photo. On the top left it says "dangerous creatures that live in the mountains" and on the top right it says "Don't touch me..." These two informations are written in English on the sign below. Other than that it's just names of the creatures/plants and some details about them.

As suggested, the yellow triangle with "!" in it is an international sign indicating danger. All the dangerous things you should be aware of are shown in photographs. I think that's all there is to know about them, unless you want to study more about it or unless you need some more backup.

The sign also has furigana on them. Not all non-Japanese people can read English (such as many of the Chinese I know), but every person in Japan has an equal right to learn the 50 kana.

According to my experience of distributing printed material for the non-Japanese in Japan, unless you can make a sign in four languages including Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean, it's fair to just make an illustration with kana on everything. Also, too much information can get the reader distracted. It's usually better to make signs as simple as possible with as less letters as possible, which this sign successfully does.

Thank you Uco for reminding me about the language barrier.

Living in a European country often makes you think English is used more or less all over the world. Sorry if I sound rude if I say I am not used to other than Japanese people and American people doing most of the travel in Japan, hence the question about no more detail in English.

I do try to stick to Japanese or at least some kind of sign language / writing when in Japan. I have seen people who are frustrated to the edge of rage when visiting Japan because English is not used in the way many people expect. Hotel reviews stating that people should not come to this specific hotel because the staff dont speak English.

Turning it around. Have anyone writing those reviews thought of the possible rage from Japanese people or other nations visitors in US etc why the signs are not written in Japanese?

the sign board is written as educational warning for Japanese children, not for adult Japanese.
I think many young pupils will come here as school excursions. the board is there for them.
(in Japan, generally, schools have one-day excursions once or twice per year at elementary and junior high schools.)

I meant no offence in my previous post (or this one either), so I'm sorry if it sounded so in any way.

Actually, I don't think the Japanese expect Japanese language when traveling abroad. In fact, most Japanese people seem to expect English signs when it comes to being "international." They even expect more English in Japan.

So for me as a Japanese who grew up in the U.S., it was quite an eye-opener when I noticed that many Latin-European people (in the 1980s) didn't understand English and that a lot of Asians (in the 1990s) couldn't even read alphabet.

I always looked up to signs in Europe, because they were usually icons and drawings rather than letters. That's very international, and it made traveling very easy for me when I was backpacking across boarders in my college days. Hopefully Japan's tourism is catching up to Europe.