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割り勘 warikan
Split the bill, straight down the middle.
What does warikan mean?
The default setting for friends eating out in Japan: one total, divided by the number of heads, nobody itemising who had the extra beer.
Example
今日は割り勘にしよう。
Let's split the bill today.
Vibe
Who you can say this to, and how it lands.
Safe to use Fine in ordinary conversation.
Culture note
Splitting evenly rather than by what you ordered is the polite version here — insisting on paying only for your own salad can read as fussy.
The story behind warikan
Warikan is a shortening of warimae kanjou, roughly "portioned accounting," and the practice is far older than the modern night out. What's changed is the arithmetic: the group total once got split at the counter with a handful of coins, and now it moves through transfer apps and code payments before anyone leaves the table.
The unwritten rule is evenness over precision. Splitting by what each person actually ordered exists, but it feels accountant-like among friends. Where the split does bend is rank: a senior colleague often quietly takes a bigger slice, and nobody announces it.
Get warikan in your pocket
割り勘 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.
