Early this month, translator and cultural consultant Yukari Oyama Peerless says she joined her husband and 13-year-old son to watch the Netflix series Cobra Kai at home in Victoria — and became upset with what she saw on the screen.
Oyama Peerless, whose first language is Japanese and who came from Nagasaki to Canada in 1998, says the Japanese language written on the props didn’t make any sense.
In one example, she says, the characters walk past a rock inscribed with Japanese words that say “envy will show you a rockless garden.” In another, a piece of script that is supposed to contain karate lessons reads,