Suteki

Suteki is a Japanese word, said to be composed of the su from subarashii 'wonderful' followed by the suffix -teki. In any case, it is usually written in Chinese characters. This has been arbitrarily assigned to writen the word suteki -- that is, there is no etymological basis for writing it this way.

The following photo, taken in the Osaka subway, shows suteki written in Chinese characters:

Suteki na manaa Chiisa na ki-kubari Mina de kizukō 'Imeeji appu Oosaka' Good manners, attention to small needs Let's everyone build it up: 'Improve the image of Osaka'

A subway station in Osaka sported the following sign, obviously as part of the same campaign. However, suteki is written in hiragana as :

Midori no Oosaka Suteki na manaa Kuriin chika-tetsu Green Osaka Good manners Clean subway

A Google search in September 2003 revealed the following distribution for suteki:

Form	No. of occurrences
	2,190,000
	252,000
	570,000