The Best Japanese Words Ever – Part 6

It’s time for 6-8 more illustrious Japanese terms. After a couple straightforward ones, it’s a hodgepodge of headscratchers and homonyms, with a couple venereal disease terms mixed in to make this a very special STD edition!

1)      歯垢 (shikoh) = teeth dirt = plaque.

Nice and simple, telling it like it is. That’s exactly why I love you, Japanese. When coming across the word “plaque” in English for the first time, there’s no normal human on this planet that would have any idea what it means. Cause English have some suck!

2)      逆ギレ (gyaku-gire) = reverse angry = ‘situation where the offender gets angry at the victim’. Like if the victim catches the offender cheating and the offender gets mad at the victim for looking at his cell phone or something.

I love this phrase so fuckin’ much. We desperately need a convenient English equivalent cause it’s so fuckin’ useful in an argument against someone who tries to turn the table on you even though you’re in the right. “Don’t you dare try to reverse angry at me, mutherfucker!”

3)      息災 (sokusai) = breathe disaster = good health.

Come again? Shouldn’t this be for like asthma, or getting the wind knocked out of you, or cumchucking?!

4)      じょせい (josei) means “woman” (女性) and “subsidy” (助成).

Very nice, Japanese. I see what you’ve done there. Once again putting the “miso” in “misogyny”.

5)      かんちょう (kancho) means “government office” (官庁) and “enema” (浣腸), which has morphed into the fun schoolboy pastime of “jamming your fore and middle fingers up someone’s ass to fuck with them”.

Bronze statue immortalizing the beloved kancho

JB logo paying homage to the immortal kancho

6)      梅毒 (baidoku) = plum poison = syphilis. 

7)      淋病 (linbyoh) = lonely disease = gonorrhea.

8)      富岡製糸場 (Tomioka seishi-joh) – the actual meaning of this is the Tomioka Silk Factory, a world heritage site in the city of Tomioka in Gunma prefecture. But “seishi” means both “silk production” and “semen”. So to my juvenile ears, this is the Tomioka Semen Factory

They’re manufacturing either “silk” or “semen”. Your choice!

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