YABAI Real Japanese

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Japanese slang does not arrive in one flavour. These are the 308 words in YABAI, sorted by where you actually hear them.


  1. Anime-ish 8 Words you meet through anime and the people who watch it.
  2. Cute 24 Soft words — the ones that sound a little like what they mean.
  3. Everyday 44 Ordinary Japanese that a textbook translates but never quite explains.
  4. Internet 58 Japanese that grew up on timelines, forums and comment sections.
  5. Otaku 46 Fandom vocabulary: how people talk about the things they love too much.
  6. Reactions 26 What you say in the second after something happens.
  7. Slang 72 The everyday slang — words that carry tone rather than information.
  8. Untranslatable 30 No clean English equivalent. The story has to do the translating.

All 308 words, A–Z →