Japanese Numbers

I think Japanese ad people are geniuses at least for one thing: phone number memorableness.  In America, we’ve got jingles and things that we can include phone numbers in—I still remember singing, “Think Ancira!  Think Ancira!  689-4100 (or whatever the number was)” over and over as a child in San Antonio—and we also have the thing where your phone number can spell out a word on a number keypad (e.g. the last four digits of Soka’s IT help desk number spells out H-E-L-P).  

The Japanese do these kinds of things too.  Here’s an example I heard on tv today: 919-919 would normally be read kyuu ichi kyuu kyuu ichi kyuu, but the advertisement shortened the syllables as “kuikku kuikku” or “quick quick” (the ad was for some sort of packing company, I think).  The Japanese also have the advantage of having multiple readings for its numbers (due to things like having both Japanese and Chinese readings for kanji characters).  Take, for example, this billboard:

3 can be read as san or mi (as in 三つ), 8 is read as hachi, and 7 can be read as shichi or nana.  This billboard for an ENT (ear, nose, throat) clinic advertises the last four digits of its phone number as mimi hana or “ear, nose.”  Cute, huh?

One more that my teacher told us about in class today (it’s not a phone number, but it’s the same concept).  There’s a new big-o broadcasting tower being built in Tokyo, and it is going to be 634 meters high.  6 can be read as roku  or mu (as in 六つ), 3 as san or mi, and 4 as yon  or shi.  So 634 can spell out mu sa shi (the san of 3 being shortened to sa), which is apparently an old name for Tokyo.  It would have been better to build the tower to be a couple meters taller, but the people building it couldn’t resist the historical shout-out.