I thought the pics meant: no tatoos, no drunkards and no yazuka.
Only seen those that say: bathe clean before getting into onsen.

Ah~ how I miss the sentos :-(
The very last line actually says, “No people that follow the style of people that wear glasses and smoke cigars”…;-)

Who do you have doing your postings for you these days? Onsen? Looks like a public bath to me. In fact, it reminds me of one I walked past in Shimo Kita decades ago (nearly). Same kind of “No Tattoos” sign. But then again, it could be someplace like Shinjuku’s Green Plaza, or Onsen 21 in Soshigaya Okura. There is that “sauna” business at the bottom…

No sunglasses or cigars in the bath. Ha ha. Yeah, I know, it’s your tweaky sense of humor…

Well, I’ll add my two cents for a translation:

1) No one allowed with tattoos.

2) No drunken assh*les.
Nor those who pester other people (迷惑 meiwaku をかける方）。
3) Admittance also forbidden to criminals, gangsters or those who have the faintest whiff of the appearance or demeanor of such dregs of society (暴力団の方 bouryokudan no kata and 暴力団風の方 bouryokudanfu no kata [My idiot son-in-law accepted]).

It doesn’t seem like most of the public baths I used to visit. But then it’s questionable if they would let obviously foreign people in the one above. “Yeah, we know, you ain’t no yakuza, but how do we know youze ain’t no American gangster or some HIV-positive, AIDS-virus-contagious, epidemic-causing, not-quite human scum? We can’t tell for sure you ain’t, now can we? So move along now. 外人不可。”

Oops. I guess a mass of spirochetes have eaten the portion of my brain responsible for checking proper spelling. I meant to write “excepted” rather than the idiotic “accepted” at the end of “3)”.

Yep. I’m on my way out. A mass *has*… NOT “have”… Ouch.

I guess my jokes are so bad, so from now on, I shall put “ha ha” after everything which is supposed to be a joke.

Percy, I guess you haven’t been to one of those 24-hour-super-futuristic-mega-onsen-fantasylands which are popping up all over the country. That’s where I took this photo.

外人不可

Wai(guo)ren bu ke. Which in Japanese is something like “Gaijin nai…allowed”?

Do they really have those signs over there?

What do you think: are they gonna kick somebody with a tattoo out or they gonna let him in free of charge?

I can’t speak to the translations but I will say that the the illustrations are great. The curvaceous thick and thin lines are nicely done and appealing. The middle character kinda reminds be of a Al Hirschfeld character drawing.

I can’t decypher irizumi. Is it from English?

I see now from wikipedia that irezumi does have kanji and it made more sense to me. I wonder why this sign opted for the kana?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irezumi

Yeah, it’s a tough thing, making a joke on a blog, which I suppose is why so many people put ‘ha ha’ or ‘he he’ or smileys.
But here your joke was quite obvious, I thought.
ha ha

John, Greece,

I used to see those characters many years ago at rental agencies when I was looking for an apartment to rent. Also a couple years ago I found the site of a business hotel which refused foreigners with a notice like 外国人の方不可。

Surfing just now I found this hotel:
http://www.yadoplaza.com/yado/H000003245.html
which says that 中学生以下のお子様・外国人の方は宿泊不可(日本在住の方はOK) children less than junior-high age, and foreigners not allowed (unless the foreigner is a resident of Japan).

Another hotel says no foreigners unless you can speak Japanese.

I couldn’t find the same dinky hotel as two years ago but it is possible that they still have a strict “No Foreigners” policy.

Roy: What would I know from a 24-hour-super-futuristic-mega-onsen fantasyland. I haven’t set foot in the land of the rising sun for years. But wait, what kind of fantasies are we talking about here and how much do they cost? Snicker snicker.

Robbie, I like those curvy drawings too. It was the main reason I took the photo.