New. Improved.

I lived in Japan for a total of four years, in the 1980s. I learned 600 kanji, (Japanese ideograms) in those four years. Only 600. That meant I would not have been able to graduate from high school. High school graduates must know the 2000 standard kanji to graduate. And now I can remember maybe 100 and can write maybe 25.

But foreign students of Japanese who live in Japan learn some kanji very quickly, like "exit", and "entrance", "restaurant", etc. And some kanji combinations ("phrase" is not the right word) stick in your mind too.

This all came back to me on the Milano metro a few days ago when I saw a bloke with some badly copied kanji tatoos...

…I looked and looked and was sure that I knew what they meant. I took a surreptitious photo (blurred and shakey as a consequence) so I could look it up when I got back home. But I didn't have to, the meaning of the mysterious kanji just popped back into my memory. 

They are pronounced "shin hatsu bai".

These kanji are used in advertising often...

...and what they mean is "new product!" . To translate the spirit of the kanji I'd say "New! Improved!"

So either the tatooist did not know what he was doing, or he was playing a joke on his customer.

Not everything in "the East" is "mysterious", especially when you understand the lingo.