Never had ones of these when I was in Japan.

Well, let's go there, shadowcat and experience it. LOL

That sign is so far off the mark, that I can't even guess what it was meant to convey. Perhaps "Fall Sale?" I counted eleven places in that photo that the mis-translated sign appears.

Club_Goer - here is your answer

Lost in translation: Japanese department store makes grovelling apology after plastering shop windows with ‘F***in' Sale’ postersBy Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 8:09 PM on 13th January 2012

Mortified bosses of a Japanese department store were forced into a grovelling apology after plastering their windows with signs boasting a 'F***in' Sale'. The Galerie shop in Osaka hung giant red signs emblazoned with the term all over their window display - as well as throughout the shop - to emphasise just how good they thought their January sale was.

The unfortunate slogan was meant to be a pun on fukubukuro - or 'lucky bags' - relating to the Japanese New Year retail custom of selling off discounted unwanted stock from the previous year in big grab bags. Obviously, the pun was lost on English-speaking visitors to the store, and while most were amused by the unsubtle example of the language barrier, others complained. It's hard to imagine how the managers must have felt when they were told that they had adorned a store, in one of ultra-polite Japan's biggest cities, with potty-mouthed slogans. The signs were hastily torn down and the store publicly apologised for any offence caused.

Bloggers on the gawker.com site wrote: 'If only we could have sat in on the meeting where the marketing team for this Osaka department store came up with the idea for their Fin' Sale, "There should be some cool English words on these signs. How about Fin' Sale? What's that mean? F***in' means, like, really good. So it's a really good sale".'

Read more: dailymail.co.uk

"It's hard to imagine how the managers must have felt when they were told that they had adorned a store, in one of ultra-polite Japan's biggest cities, with potty-mouthed slogans."

I have no doubt the managers were THINKING wtf is the big deal as they were forced to publicly apologize. Ultra-polite is a perspective of Western visitors. Osaka is commonly known in Japan like Philly is known here in the USA, full of rude, crude assholes.