Japanese "play with words"

Japanese
#1

In my experience, there is more “play with words” in Japan than in other countries. Do you have any examples? Let me share some that I picked up:

I once recieved a text message like this:
":ant: :ant: :ant: :ant: :ant: :ant: :ant: :ant: :ant: :ant: "
What does it mean?
Ant is “あり”, ten can be read as とう --> ありがとう

“39” is another similar one.
さんきゅう -> sankyuu, sounds like “thank you”.

Students sometimes eat とんかつ before exams…Why?
かつ - 勝つ - to win

(Actually I ate とんかつ before my interview, and I got the job so it seems to be working ;))

Do you have any other examples?

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#2

This is a really interesting topic.
The numbers you mentioned are really common, they play with numbers all the time. For example, my local izakaya is called kushi tonbo - and they often call it 94くしとんぼ 310みと. Furthermore, 310 is actually the postcode for Mito, which makes it even better!

Also the one that springs to mind for me is that many Japanese people put ww in their texts. The reason is because 笑わら begins with a ‘w’.
But even further to that, they sometimes write 草くさ because ‘wwwwwwwwwww’ looks like grass!

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#3

634 - むさし - 武蔵 - 侍様
東京タワーのエレベーターは1階から一番上階までが634秒かかるだと聞いた。確認じゃなかった、でも信じられて。

:poop: - うんち - 蘊蓄「うんちく」,
昔いつもうんちエモジを見てたびっくりだった。日本人大分きちんとね。でも説明後分けられるになった。

Tap for English

634 in Japanese is very similar to the most famous samurai’s name - Musashi. Supposedly the Tokyo tower elevator goes from the bottom to the top in 634 seconds as a tribute to him (I haven’t confirmed this, but it wouldn’t surprise me.)

The poop emoji being used so much in “fastidiously clean” Japan, but its associate with knowing a lot/doing well in exams. Once we know this explanation, then perhaps it starts to make more sense.

このスレも好きです。ありがたい。
(((o(ﾟ▽ﾟ)o)))

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#4

Yakuza is a play on ya-ku-sa (8-9-3) the worst hand dealt in the game oicho-kabu. Oicho-kabu itself is a play on 8 and 9.

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#5

That’s is so in line in with their “mission statement” :scream:

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#6

Doesn’t that imply they consider themselves to have been dealt a bad hand through no fault of their own though?

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#7

Their justification for their existence is that there are always people born in slams with “no future” and with tendency to misbehaviour , so they provide young folks like that with structure, and people should be grateful for that. on top of that they say they stop chinese mafia from entering japan and it is better to have proud japanese to be you mafia in their view.

It very rarely the case that bad people don’t have solid philosophy to make themselves look like good ones. It is prime example of that. Theirs philosophy seems noble even at first glance, before you notice obvious fallacies. Like: it is police job to deal with chinese mafia.

That’s obviously what I read. I have no chance to have insider insight…

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#8

And obvious they have to believe that if you find yourself in situation they have to deal with you, you have for sure got very poor hand…

It is very clever name.

Edit:
“knock,knock”
“who’s there?”
“Your worst hand in life”

makes perfect sense.

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#9

The origins of the people who make up the Yakuza are actually quite interesting. I read something a while ago which said they were something like 30 percent are japanese born koreans who haven’t always been treated very well(understatement), and 60 percent of burakumin decent. The burakumin were people who were believed to have 穢れ due to the kinds work they performed, essentially untouchables. There was even apparently books being sold to major companies until the 80’s so that people could avoid hiring them.

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#10

So basically “you are giving us poor hands, so how about we will start dealing cards?” kind of deal? i would love polish mafias to be that sophisticated. they are usually named like “mafia of [insert the name of poor area with high crime rate from random polish city]”

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#11

I always thought they were saying 臭っ！, then just shortened it to くさ, which is 草. That makes a lot more sense now xD

I’ve seen 4649 be used as よろしく in casual threads lol

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#12

I’ve come across 3150 for 最高 and 11月29日 as いい肉 a day to celebrate meat.

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#13

And people dare to be surprise that we think of people from that region as good at math? xD

I see I will have to pay more attention to numbers then…

#14

A: JLPTは 五級ごきゅうから一級いっきゅうまで ですね。どのレベルを勉強べんきょうしますか？
B: 三級さんきゅう
A: You’re welcome!
:slightly_smiling_face:

English

A: The JLPT is from Level 5 to Level 1, right? Which level are you going to study?
B: Level 3
A: You’re welcome!

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#15

11th November is Pocky Day! Because all the 1s looks like Pocky!

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#16

Nov 11, 2011 must have been super Pocky Day! – 11/11/11

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#17

It’s actually one of my students who taught me that. I misheard him and thought he said ‘bocky (erection) day’ - I was teased by them for weeks… but at least I learned something.

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#18

Incidentally, 11/11 is forever alone day in China.

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#19

I like japanese because due to the huge number of homophones it is super easy to make puns.

Once in the Tokyo metro my hair was all messed up due to strong wind, so I pointed at my hair and said to a Japanese friend: 【髪風(かみかぜ)です】 which makes her laugh.

When i take a coca cola i like to stare at it while saying 【おい！こら！】

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#20

楽しそうな友達🤝(๑>◡<๑)

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