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On chapter 92, there's a conversation between Yoshimura and Roma inside Anteiku that goes like this:

Yoshimura: What do you have to be careful about in both "the coffee you served to ghouls" and 'prostitutes on street corner'?
Roma: ??
Yoshimura: "Sugar"
Roma: ...... what? (confused)

the conversation inside Anteiku

This joke went right over my head when I read this chapter. If someone could explain it to me that would be great.

AnimNations
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  • I want to take a guess as to a prostitute named “Sugar” but I’m not entirely sure if that’s actually the joke – AnimNations Nov 30 '17 at 13:48
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    @AnimNations Is there a character in Tokyo Ghoul named "Satou"? Since that's the Japanese word for "sugar", but can also be used as a name. – senshin Nov 30 '17 at 19:44

2 Answers2

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As stated on Wikia, the original joke is about "serving coffee for ghouls" and "man on a (baseball) base". The original script goes like this:

「"喰種"へ淹れるコーヒー」とかけて「鈍足な出塁者」ととく――「トウルイは控えるように」。

Source (Japanese)

Rough translation:

"Serving coffee for ghouls" and "slow-footed man on a (baseball) base"... is "to refrain from tourui".

Here, tourui is either 糖類 (saccharides; sweeteners) or 盗塁 (base stealing; steal; stolen base), which basically means:

  • Not consuming sugar on coffee for ghouls
  • Resist stealing a base for slow-footed man

Since this Japanese wordplay is almost impossible to be translated properly (and the joke itself is quite technical), I believe the translator changed it so that joke can be understood easier while trying to preserve the nuance for "sweetener/sugar" and "serving coffee for ghouls".


... as for the meaning of "sugar" in the translated version, it probably means:

Aki Tanaka
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I believe the sugar is a reference to cocaine. If you look at pictures of crack cocaine, it kind of looks like an off color sugar

Bryan Tan
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