Darts: Yotsuya police station; Laurels: Laforet

This post is about darts and laurels.

laurels 月桂冠｛げっけいかん｝
discharge a shower of darts at
～に辛辣｛しんらつ｝な言葉｛ことば｝を浴びせる
(definitions from 英辞郎 on the web)

"Darts and laurels" means criticism and praise. As a side note, it's a bit strange to reverse the order.

× laurels and darts

So, the laurels go to Laforet. Johnny mentioned them yesterday. They had a clever advertisement with correct English. It can be hard to use English correctly, and they were clever on top of that. Nice job!

The darts, though, go to the Yotsuya police station.

× Neighbourhood Watch & Police Emergency Call 110 for cleanup of Shinjuku
○ The neighbourhood watch and police ask you to call 110 in an emergency to help clean up Shinjuku. <- I think this is what they mean, but I can't really be sure.

The reason it's not clear is that they have at least three nouns at the beginning of the sentence. "Call" is seen as a noun because "emergency", normally a noun, is interpreted as an adjective modifying "call". However, then it gets strange because they are using "call" like a verb with "110" as its object.

So we can conclude that police in Shinjuku haven't studied enough grammar.

And they made more mistakes!

× Task force for anti-crime campaign on hot spot
○ Anti-crime task force for crime hot spots <- it's still not clear how many hot spots there are

hot spot of crime

犯罪｛はんざい｝の多発地点｛たはつ ちてん｝(definition from 英辞郎 on the web)

They probably could have made it simpler, like this:

Task force for crime hot spots

So, congratulations again to Laforet; the police should be learning from the fashionable in this case.