Recently, a man shared a heartwarming story of how he created an illustration for his wife as a Christmas gift. The woman was a big fan of the "Woman Yelling at Cat" meme, so he decided to create illustrations for her. He added Japanese characters to the illustration that refer to the version of the meme that pairs the woman and cat with the sign that could be read as SALE SALE or SASA LELE. The man used hiragana characters on the image with the woman, which say “seru seru” and on the cat side, which say “sasa rere” to recreate the phonetics.
A Japanese speaker later pointed out that typically, non-native words are written in katakana, so it would be appropriate to write セルセル and ササレレ. The man appreciated the input and acknowledged that he debated using katakana but was tripped up on SASA LELE not really being a word at all but just sounds. However, he liked the way hiragana looked when written with a brush. The Japanese speaker agreed that hiragana is aesthetically more appealing, but katakana is most often used for foreign words, animal sounds, and onomatopoeias. In this case, a nonsense word could also be written in katakana since Japanese is full of such words.
The man and the Japanese speaker had a polite and friendly conversation about the nuances of writing Japanese characters. The man appreciated the speaker's thoughtful response and enjoyed reading the message. Later, the man posted that he had ordered a set of prints and was happy that he could give them to his sister as a birthday present. She loves this meme and has her house decorated with Japanese art, making this an absolutely perfect gift for her.
You may also be interested in the following articles：woman yelling at cat：