For a very long time, there’s been this travel services company based in the Kinki region of Japan, called Kinki Nippon Tourist. I remember hearing about this organization way back to my early days in college, when my classmates and I would laugh at the name. “Kinki” is one of those Japanese words/names which was homonymous with an unfortunate English word, like the Japanese word for “poor” (“bimbo”) or “city” (borrowed from English, but pronounced “shiti”). The name “Kinki Nippon Tourist” was even more unfortunate in terms of the overall image from the whole name–especially since the company provides a lot of services to English-speaking travelers.

So you would think that, even if they decided not to change the name, they would be extra-cautious about making further unfortunate choices in names for themselves. You would think that, but apparently either they just haven’t learned the lesson, or are intentionally aiming to make English speakers laugh. Why? Because, as evidenced by the photo below of a train ad from Kinki Nippon Tourist (or from the top left of their web page), they have decided to use the initials from their company’s name as their logo.

That’s right: they decided to go with “KNT!” as their shorthand name. I mean, really. A company named “Kinki Nippon Tourist” should know better than that.

Or maybe they just never bothered to figure out what all the snickering foreigners were on about.