Zenbei ga naita
Zenbei ga naita — literally, “the entire United States wept.” Means nothing important. One might be moved to wonder how the above expression could possibly take on such an unrelated meaning. After checking the blogs, your reporter came up with this explanation: When many U.S. films open in Japan, they are accompanied by posters claiming that American viewers were moved to tears. But the such films have little emotional impact on viewers here. So Japanese filmgoers have learned, apparently, to disregard such promotional claims as largely meaningless. This is a fun article about how Japanese teenagers are having a profound impact on the Japanese language .