In Interlude, I was under the impression that all of the action takes place in Japan; however, some of the signs are a bit puzzling.
Now, I’m pretty sure that these signs aren’t in Japanese. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and guess that they’re in Korean. Maybe the Japanese producers didn’t notice this, but I doubt it. Since a lot of anime is outsourced to Korea these days, perhaps it’s their way of acknowledging the subtle infiltration of Korean animators in the Japanese industry. They realize that, someday soon, Korea will be as well-known for animation as Japan. Pretty soon, Korea will take over the games industry and then the auto industry!
Maybe it would be a good idea to start learning some Korean…