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十八番 ohako
Your guaranteed party piece.
What does ohako mean?
The karaoke song, the dish, the joke you can always pull off. Everyone has one, and everyone else already knows what yours is.
Example
カラオケでの十八番はこの曲だ。
This song is my go-to at karaoke.
Vibe
Who you can say this to, and how it lands.
Safe to use Fine in ordinary conversation.
Culture note
Written with the numbers eighteen but read ohako. It comes from a kabuki family's list of eighteen signature plays, said to be kept safe in a box — hako.
The story behind ohako
Here is a reading that ambushes every learner. The characters say eighteen, the mouth says ohako. The trail leads to a kabuki dynasty that collected eighteen signature plays into an official set in the nineteenth century, and the popular story is that the scripts were kept in a box, hako, which handed the word its pronunciation. That last link is folk explanation rather than proven fact, but it has outlived every rival theory.
What survives today is the idea of a guaranteed showpiece. The karaoke song you have owned since university. The one dish you cook for guests. Everybody has an ohako, and everybody else knows exactly what yours is, which is half the pleasure.
Get ohako in your pocket
十八番 is one of 308 words in YABAI, a Japanese culture snack for Android. Every word comes with its meaning, an example sentence, a vibe check and a story like the one above — in 13 languages, read aloud by your device. Paid app: no ads, no sign-up, no subscription.
