And it’s time for the third Japanese slang review of 2022 (see all prior posts here)! In these posts I deep dive into the world of Japanese terms you probably won’t see in a textbook, looking at what they mean, how they are used, and where they came from. Sources and definitions for the terms I discuss here will come from a variety of places, but as always I draw heavily from the website numan.tokyo. As always, these are “new to me” rather than something I am able to trace the exact origin or date of… but many are actually new!
The 10 terms for this month are:
- マウンティンク: Asserting dominance/one-upping
- きゃぱい: At your limits/at it’s limits
- BBA: Shortening of ばばあ, disrespectful term for “older women”
- ナマポ: Derogatory term for people on welfare
- ずっしょ: 2gether 4ever
- 今北産業: I just arrived, summarize it for me
- 無理ゲー: Something very difficult
- ギャルべ: A ギャル at heart
- 井田ポン: A loving touch on the head ❤
- ミリしら: I don’t have the slightest idea
Going forward, I’ll present definitions of each term, show examples of use in context, and investigate the term’s usage rules and origins. Examples of use in context are all taken from public posts on Twitter. Names of the people who wrote the examples are censored in most cases, as they would be in a research article. The exception is when the source is famous/a public figure, trying to promote something, or sharing art. In these cases, especially for art, I will link directly to the tweet.
1. マウンティング
マウンティング is a term that gained popularity after 2014, when it appeared in the J-Drama “First Class“. Whether the drama came up with the マウンティング phrase itself is unclear, but the drama’s use certainly popularized the term. The origins of this “slang” use of マウンティング that appeared in First Class come from a semi-uncommon but not necessarily slang version of the same word, which refers to when animals express dominance over one another. This meaning is linked to the English version of “mounting” as equal to “mating”, especially in species when the male animal climbs on top of the female animal from behind to breed (e.g., dogs, deer). But in Japanese the term has evolved to also refer to acts of climbing on something to show your power over it. For instance, the (non-slang) definition of マウンティング by Goo.dict notes both animal mating and an act done by monkeys to show dominance as acceptable Japanese uses of マウンティング. Weblio mentions the same two uses in their definition as well. However, this “expressing dominance” use is not listed in the English definition of “mounting” on Dictionary.com, so it appears to be a addition particular to the Japanese context.
Anyway, so when humans engage in マウンティング in Japanese, the sexual meaning is actually gone entirely. But it’s not quite simply “expressing dominance” either. For instance, beating someone in a fight ins’t マウンティング, not is “putting them in their place” verbally. Rather, the type of マウンティング used in and popularized by First Class is acts, behavior, and comments meant to (often subtly) “one up” some one else. The motive could be anything – an actual sense of superiority or overcompensation to hide feelings of inferiority – and conscious or unconscious, but the outcome is the same.
Importantly though, マウンティング isn’t blatant bragging. If someone rocks up with a bunch of jewels around their neck and talks about how they graduated from 東大 in 6 months with a PhD, that’s just bragging. Rather, マウンティング is more subtle. This website lists acts like name dropping brands, critiquing others’ fashion or style out of nowhere in a way that can sound like a compliment (oh, wow it looks great for something so… cheap), while this site mentions just forms of general one-upping like “oh, yeah I slept for only four hours last night” or false humility like “I didn’t really study at all haha but oh look I passed with flying colors”. The person below, for instance, aligns with these explanations by wondering if they are doing ママ・マウンティング by mentioning that when they come home they are greeted by kids and a husband that want to talk to them even though they want to be left along to nibble on some chocolate.
マウンティング can easily be a verb though too, as in the post below where the author discusses how acts of マウンティングする are ruining the music world by causing people to get discouraged and quit.
Apparently though, the word can also just mean “climb on top of” too. So don’t forget that マウンティング had meanings before it became, uh… マウンティング.
Furthermore, is worth nothing that this new マウンティング can also be somewhat gendered. The term was popularized by a drama depicting women competing in a cutthroat workplace after all, and even dictionaries list different behaviors for men and women when describing the term. These differences are all based on stereotypes, and many that I think are a bit old fashioned and not even remotely restricted to a single gender to be honest, but they are important to note as terms like マウンティング女性 and マウンティング男性 which refer to groups of women/men engaging in a toxic series of behaviors defined along social assumptions do exist. The translation below, from Weblio, shows these stereotyped definitions quite directly, and I found many websites echoing these phrasings (again, as boringly sexist as they feel). So in short, while I don’t endorse these stereotypes at all, I do think they are important to note, as if a term has sexists implications to the extent that dictionaries are including them, those implications are required to attend to if we want to understand the word’s use in the current Japanese context.
So for instance, when this person argues that there aren’t any “mounting women” where they work now because people in the beauty industry have their own worlds and successes and don’t need to show superiority unless they feel inferior…
…or when Vogue mentions a show about マウンティング that “expresses the particular feelings of women”…
…or when this article notes マウンティング男性 as saying things to impress people with their knowledge, sucking up to their boss, or bragging about the same old accomplishments over and over, and the post below (which Google Translate does a surprisingly OK job with besides “mounting”) mentions male-mounter bosses who critique women for getting upset at, well, upsetting things, we see a key difference in how the terms are used.
The post below is especially interesting, in noting マウンティング男性 behavior towards women rather than between men. Here, in a discussion of road crew, we see a rather common issue of men telling women how to do their jobs described as マウンティング男性.
So if you call someone a マウンティング男性 or 女性 do be careful, as the stereotyped behaviors in Japan linked to these terms are a bit different. That said, they certainly both refer to showing off in a way that isn’t quite bragging but is still generally annoying or frustrating.
While マウンティング itself is coming up on a decade of popular use, it’s definitely here to stay as far as slang goes, as it is seeing continued use to date to complain about people who just have to be number one. In this way, it’s like a Japanese version of “one upping”, although obviously with some social gender stereotypes mixed in. As a result, マウンティング is a little trickier and specific to certain behaviors than “one upping”, so be careful of direct translation as while “one upping” could work in come contexts in others it would erase implications important to the term.
2. きゃぱい
きゃぱい is a shortening of キャパシティーいっぱい. That is, someone or something’s “capacity” is “full”. The term was popularized by the EGG model Kogawa Yuna, who heard some older woman in Osaka say she was キャパオーバー (that is キャパシティー オーバー). Yuna liked the phrase, but thought it was a bit too long, so shortened it. Her coining – which she has actually said should be written entirely in hiragana – was a hit, and became popular enough to become EGG’s #1 slang term for 2021 (you can see the rest of their choices in the Twitter thread I created below).
As you can tell, きゃぱい is pretty straightforward in terms of use. If you’re at your near limits emotionally, physically, or mentally, you are きゃぱい. I suppose its worth stressing that this is pre rather than post going to full on “overload”, as きゃぱい puts you at the border. Remember, the ぱい is from いっぱい not オーバー; いっぱい means at the maximum, not at overflowing. So if you’re commenting (in what I assume is a bit of playful joking) about how the staff of your TV show are loveless and overworked…
…or about how your brain is shot from the most recent season of a competitive game you play, it’s a great term to use.
It’s also quite commonly just attached to selfies when people are, I imagine, feeing a bit exhausted. I’m a bit confused by this use of きゃぱい + selfie, but it was common enough online that I feel it is vital to point out.
That said, there are uses of きゃぱい which don’t relate to stress. When you are full of joy, or complementing a person or product for reaching the “limits” of ability, attractiveness, or just general joy-producing goodness, you can also call it/them きゃぱい. For example, the person below uses the term to express joy and appreciation at receiving some presents in a game. The repetition of アガー and ありがとうございます shows clearly that this is not a stressful situation, but rather one that tests their capacity for joy.
This next person uses the term to complement a model, in a way that seems to imply that their beauty/talent goes to the limits of possibility. Perhaps this actually explains the selfie thing? きゃぱい as arrogance at how good you luck?
Indeed, some people out there even seem a bit confused by this current use as a positive! The tweet below is a case-in-point. But from what I can tell, the sort of joyful きゃぱい is actually currently outpacing the stressful one in terms of use.
In short then, きゃぱい basically means that whatever the emotion is, you’re about at the maximum you can be. Stress and joy are most common though for sure. The term’s use is, from what I can tell, dying out a bit, but it’s certainly still in quite a bit of circulation.
…oh, and by the way, if you noticed きゃぱい being used as an adjective modifying a noun in some of the earlier examples (きゃぱいスタッフ) and wondered “can I negate it then?”, the answer is yes! … kinda. As you can see in the post above, there is some use of きゃぱくない out there. But I found literally less than 10 examples, and some of them seemed to be popular because of the joke of negating it (as in the example above). So it’s possible to say you are きゃぱくない, or, as one tweet I saw said, write something like “きゃぱくない日はない”, but it’s not very common to do so.
3. BBA
BBA is a term of abuse aimed at older women. It is a shortening of ばばあ, which is, well, a term of abuse aimed at older women. I try not to cover insults and the like in these reviews too much because I don’t want to encourage their use, but, well, if they are out there it is certainly important to learn about them.
The form BBA is primarily a written rather than spoken slang, unlike the origin ばばあ, as we can see in the tweet below complaining about a woman proselytizing on the street. This was actually one of the least mean and sexist examples I came across, so note that frequently calling other people a BBA is likely to associate you with a very distinct group.
For good measure, here’s another example where a poster uses BBA to recount a story of being told they are a ばばあ at 26. As it is not likely at all that the 65 year old man who insulted this woman is up to date with his Japanese netspeak, we see the form functioning as online short hand rather than something that is actually said (e.g., “ビービーエイー”).
That said, there is a “positive” use of BBA too: BBA is also used in a self-depreciating way by women who are not of the age one typically expects to be called a ばばあ. This is potentially analogous to 30 year old men calling themselves おじさん jokingly, and is the primary use actually noted in my first source for the BBA slang term. For example, this person calls themselves a BBA to note, humorously, the potential irony of a married woman getting a birthday present that includes candy meant for ひな祭り (she calls herself デカい because she’s tall).
More commonly though, it’s just used in people’s Twitter names or @handles. For instance, the person below calls themselves “BBA Normal Salaryman’s Wife” as their main Twitter tag, in what is best understood as a bit of self-mocking fun rather than a term of abuse. After spending a bit of time reviewing BBA, I can say without a doubt that this is by far the most common use, as names like @word_BBA are extremely common. So lots of women are sort of calling themselves BBA to have a bit of a laugh about getting older than they used to be.
So in short, BBA is not a nice word, but it is one that has been “reclaimed” in a way by women online. If you want to call yourself a BBA, well then go ahead, although do remember that not everyone is down with terms of abuse even in self-mocking contexts. If you want to call someone else a BBA though, you’d better be ready for a fight.
4. ナマポ
While on terms of abuse, let’s talk about ナマポ. Compared to BBA, ナマポ is much older and more “established”. It was created on 2chan, and according to two sources first hit mainstream awareness around 2012 when it was used on TV by the comedian Koumoto Junichi. This guy appears to have a history of getting in trouble and baiting reactions, and eventually was forced to apologize for this and/or similar events. So it’s a mean term created by someone who is kind of a mean jerk. Anyway, while ナマポ therefore isn’t new, I only came about it recently, as it happened to appear as a translation of a Korean slang term on the zombie show All of Us Are Dead.
So what is ナマポ? Well, the term comes from a shortening of 生活保護 (せいかつほご), or “livelihood protection/welfare”. Some of my sources note that one reason 生活保護 was shortened to ナマポ instead of 生保 (せいほ) was to differentiate the shortening from 生保 (せいほ), a shortening meaning 生命保険 (せいめいほけん, life insurance). By reading 生 via it’s kun-yomi なま instead of せい and then voicing ほ as ぽ, the link to 生活保護 instead of 生命保険 becomes clear. While this theory posits a “neutral” use of ナマポ as just a generic shortening made for practical reasons, in reality any neutral use of ナマポ is quite rare. I did find a few examples of ナマポ = 生活保護 that didn’t contain anger and abuse, but they were the minority. ナマポ is without question primarily a derogatory term for either poor people or welfare itself, and often has implications of someone who is “gaming the system”. Indeed, you can even see some pretty blatant discrimination in the online slang dictionary definitions of the term.
To give an example of the use to refer to a person, the tweet below serves as a general template. Here we see the author complain about getting saddled with all the funeral fees for her mother’s death, and as part of her complaint notes that although her older brother is a ナマポ he should still help out. This was, to be blunt, one of the least cruel posts I found using the term, so its an imperfect example but I didn’t want to amplify voices that were just horrible.
Again though, ナマポ can also just be the financial support itself. This person says, for instance, uses ナマポ to say that they are going to stop doing stocks and just receive welfare. In this use to mean “get welfare”, the noun ナマポ is frequently combined with もらう. So ナマポをもらう is similar to “be on the dole” or “be on welfare”.
That said, there does seem to be a bit of a movement to reclaim ナマポ among those who receive financial assistance just like the movement to reclaim BBA (although with less self-mocking). This next person is a pretty blatant example, as they sarcastically calls out to online trolls by labeling themselves not just ナマポ but also a ツイフェミ (a “Twitter feminist”, a slur used by Japanese nationalists online) proudly before showing of the food they made using “ナマポの銭 (ぜに)” (welfare money).
And many people are proudly putting ナマポ in their Twitter names, with most of these accounts spreading awareness of what their lifestyle is like.
The last member of the list, ナマポごはん, even has an interesting little blog style account where they post what they are able to cook with limited funds.
Again, I’m always reluctant to cover terms of abuse like this but I do feel its important to have awareness of them and catalogue them. I certainly do not encourage anyone to use ナマポ, but I do hope that knowing about words like it and BBA is of some benefit.
5. ずっしょ
Alright, let’s move away from insults and return to something lighthearted. ずっしょ is a shortening of ずっと一緒, or “(let’s stay) together forever”. While the term made EGG’s list of top slang of 2021, Google Trends notes that it has been around for a bit longer…. although the data is a bit suspect. We are seeing a really minor interest until quite recently, so who knows if Google is getting the hits right. Certainly, I can say that most of the articles I noted discussing ずっしょ online were written in November or December 2021, so any prior hits may be a fluke or caused by something else.
Anyway, the term ずっしょ is quite popular as a hashtag or something to write in yearbooks, and sees a fair bit of use online. It is quite straightforward though, so there’s not a lot of nooks and crannies to uncover. The only special thing to note is that people like to use it in sentences that have a lot of hiragana sometimes, as in this person’s statement of love for their current partner Kousei.
That said, you don’t have to have an actual relationship in the romantic sense in order to use ずっしょ. The term is also commonly used in fandoms too. The person below, for instance, uses it to note that they will always “be with” an idol they like even though they’ve done their final one-man-show.
Or you can even use it to note that you are obsessed with your phone.
So that’s ずっしょ, it’s pretty easy to use! Generally speaking, as you can see, people just slap it on the end of a statement as an after thought, but you can also say これからもずっしょ etc. I didn’t see many people using the word within a longer sentence, so there is certainly a preference for putting ずっしょ at the end-half of an exclamation rather than as just part of a longer statement – something that might be worth noting if you are keen to use ずっしょ sometime.
6. 今北産業 (いまきたさんぎょう)
I was surprised to see this pop up on a list of current slang, as I’ve actually known about this for a while (apologies for the マウンティング)! The phrase 今北産業 is not a new term at all, but perhaps just now its popped into the greater public conscious. I first encountered it back around 2017-8, when I was looking up famous internet slang for a Japanese sociolinguistics class I taught. If 今北産業 is now seeing increased attention for whatever reason though I’m quite happy, as it is a pretty hilarious term.
Basically, 今北産業 takes a shortening of a “normal” sentence and then changes most of the kanji to obscure the meaning. The original sentence is 「今来たから、三行で説明してください (imakita kara, sangyou de setsumei shite kudasai)」, or “I have just arrived, so please explain what is going on in three sentences”. By changing 来た to 北 and 三行 to 産業, you get the nonsense looking phrase “Now North Manufacturing”, which is a fun way of requesting that people catch you up on whatever is going on in a chat, thread, or similar situation. Plus it takes less time to write than 今来たから三行で説明してください!
So as something that’s mainly used to catch up on entire chat threads or ask for summaries of live discussions that you missed part of, 今北産業 is a bit tricky to find examples of in “the wild”, as I can’t really sit around Japanese Twitch streams waiting for its use. The best I could find were old images like this from long-dead chats.
Fortunately though, 今北産業 does see application in spaces that are not “live” as well, so it’s not a dead term by any means. On Twitter, for instance, 今北産業で as a phrase is used to indicate that you would like a very simple, brief explanation, as is the case in this person asking why Russia attacked Ukraine:
This next person shows us another use, wherein 今北産業の人 means “those who just arrived/those who need a quick explanation”. The poster then go on to summarize a news article about the invasion for these “people from the Now North Corporation”.
And finally, in this next tweet we can see 今北産業的 used to mean something like “the kind of explanation you give briefly” as well. The poster here got called to help out in another hospital ward, and then when they arrived “although the people there could have just given me a 今北産業-type send off they didn’t record or tell me anything”. So we have quite the versatile phrase!
Unsurprisingly, Japanese netizens find the name 今北産業 itself quite amusing and make up stories about this supposed “Manufacturing Company”. I couldn’t find any these stories, just articles mentioning that they absolutely existed on 2chan, but there are a BUNCH of memes. Someone has even made 今北産業 business cards, which reference the online decision that the company is in Amagasaki city in Hyogo…
…there is also ASCII art…
…and a parody home page. So 今北産業 is still well alive despite being quite old, and definitely has a long history of memes and practical use behind it. Of course though, as some of my sources warn, don’t assume that people give you an accurate summary just because you asked for one!
7. 無理ゲー (むりげー)
A 無理ゲー is literally a game that is impossible. Or at least really difficult. Think Dark Souls, rogue-likes, and those kind of games. By extension, calling something in real life a 無理ゲー is simply a way of saying that it’s really, really hard. Write 10,000 words by tomorrow? 無理ゲーだ! Work until midnight but you have a test at school the next day at 6 AM? それも無理ゲーよね. There’s no real difference between 無理 and 無理ゲー in terms of the literal meaning of the expression and the use, but the latter is of course more slangy and helps evoke the idea of crossing an impossible video game stage rather than just, well, being impossible. So maybe it makes the crushing impossibility sound a bit more lighthearted and fun.
As you can see from the examples above and below, 無理ゲー is most commonly used as some kind of complaint. It’s basically a noun, and can modify other nouns via the 無理ゲーの construction. The person below uses this form to mean “an impossible day”.
The noun is also used in a few collocations, such as:
- 無理ゲーを勝利する: “to beat a 無理ゲー (could be a real game)”
- 無理ゲーを続ける : “to continue to create 無理ゲー situations”
- 無理ゲーを攻略する: “to attempt to win against 無理ゲー situations”
- 無理ゲーを強いられる: “forced into a 無理ゲー situation”
- 無理ゲーを立ち向かう: “bravely stand against a 無理ゲー situation”
- 無理ゲーを感じる: “something gives off 無理ゲー vibes”
For example, here’s a use of 無理ゲーを続ける in action…
…and here we can see ～を強いられる used to describe a situation of trying to live without financial support (which they need due to personal reasons I’m not going to detail).
So 無理ゲー is a pretty straightforward term, but has a lot of interesting uses via combination with a range of verbs. As one final note of care though, a 無理ゲー can still be just an impossible game, so if someone is complaining about one to you check whether they are having a hard time in life or just can’t beat a boss in Elden Ring before you choose how to best respond.
8. ギャルべ
ギャルベ is a derivation of terms like イエベ or ブルベ, which respectively refer to a “yellow base” or “blue base”. That is, the type of “base” that you select for make-up that works for your skin tone. Playing off these terms by attaching the phrase ギャル, a ギャルベ means that you are a “ギャル base”. That is, you are 100% ギャル at heart, or that you are born with a “gyaru face”. Indeed, the ベ = ベース joke is often stressed here via phrases like 「イエベ、ブルベ、ギャルべ」or questions like 「あなたはイエベ？ ブルベ？ それともギャルベ？」.
The phrase is definitely one of the most simple of this month’s list, and sees medium use overall. You can use it to describe yourself as ギャル as heart…
…or to comment on someone else’s appearance. This person, for example, argues that Ten of the Korean Idol group NCT has a “ギャルベ” and that’s why everything looks good on him.
The phrase can just refer to the dark tan skin traditionally associated with ギャル too. The artist below is an interesting case, as they use the phrase ギャルベに焼く (lit: fry the gyaru-base) to refer to darkening the tanning of the character they have drawn. From what I can tell, they are literally one of only two people alive to use this ギャルベ + 焼く combination online… but there are at least two!
From what I can see ギャルベ doesn’t have the strongest current use, with most people actually just enjoying the イエベ、ブルベ、ギャルべ rhyme more than actually using ギャルベ to talk about their identity. But it is seeing some life online, obviously especially among ギャルベ individuals, and given how long ギャル themselves have hung around ギャルベ might be surprisingly long lived even if it never takes off as a mainstream term.
9. 井田ポン (いだぽん)
Did you think we’d make it a full month without a term spawned by BL? Well, you’re wrong! Once again the BL scene has been a fruitful source of new slang terms for the Japanese internet. This time, we have a term that references a specific action performed by characters from the recent TV-drama version of the manga 消えた初恋: a loving tap on the head often given by Ida Kōsuke (played by Meguro Ren of SNOWMAN) to Aoki Sota (played by played by Michieda Shunsuke of Naniwa Danshi). So the 井田 in いだぽん refers to Ida, and the ポン part is the “sound” of softly tapping Aoki on the head as a gesture of affection. So while 消えた初恋 itself is nothing new, the popularity of the drama and this little gesture that got caught on film caused this new term to spawn. You can see an example of an 井田ポン in action in the second video below.
The most common use of 井田ポン is, unsurprisingly, to reference examples from the show. Apparently, Ida touches Aoki’s head quite a bit.
You can also use 井田ポン though when you, yourself, want to be patted on the head. Presumably from Ida (or the actor playing him), but it’s a little bit unclear; it could just be that you want a loving head tap.
That said, there is one trend that indicates that 井田 does have to do the head tap for it to be a proper 井田ポン: when someone else does a 井田ポン-style head touch to a person, people on the internet often phrase it as 井田ポンならぬNAMEポン (not 井田ポン but NAMEポン), as in the various examples below:
So unfortunately for those who want to start giving out 井田ポン lovingly to their partners, if you do it… it looks like it’s not 井田ポン. It’s just 井田ポンならぬYOURNAMEHEREポン. Which isn’t as good, of course, but it might be the next best thing?
10. ミリしら
Do you know what ミリしら means? You don’t have even the slightest clue? That’s right! That’s exactly what it means, good job. ミリしら is a shortening of 一ミリも知らない, or “I don’t even know one millimeter”. Why is ミリ used here as a measure of knowledge? Well, I’m not quite sure. But it all stems from the choice of an internet denizen on a Japanese YouTube-like website called NicoNicoDoga. This person uploaded a video of an anime they had never seen without audio, adding what is called アフレコ (after recording) of them trying to explain what is going on. The adlib-style took off and created a whole genre of videos, which expanded to include people singing songs they hadn’t heard before. Unlike the adlib videos, which are obvious parodies and jokes, the song versions of the ミリしら genre are often popular because they are quite good. The ミリしら cover below, for instance, doesn’t have over 1.5 million views because its bad, but rather because the “blind” take has an unexpectedly cool rhythm.
More recently, and especially on Twitter, ミリしら has become an activity where people guess the names or personality types of a bunch of characters from a media series they (claim to have) not watched. The person below does this with Demon Slayer, guessing the characters’ plot points and often mis-reading the kanji for their names. In this use, you can simply present the graphic and say ミリしらです, but it also appears in forms like ミリしらする・やる. Basically, if ミリしら is verbed, it refers to this game more than anything. The form ミリしらで can also mean “without any knowledge”, as in ミリしらで書いた meaning you drew something (e.g., a character from a show) without any background research.
Still though, ミリしら can and does see some use in its origin as a term just meaning that you have no idea. So if you know nothing about bushido, you can call yourself 武士道ミリしら!
And that’s the slang review for March! You used to be ミリしら about these terms, but now as a form of マウンティング you can declare yourself a ギャルベ BBA, or even give someone a nice 井田ポン when they ask for the 今北産業 on your slang-filled speech so understanding your conversation isn’t a 無理ゲー that puts them at きゃぱい. And hey, after that you may become ずっしょ friends! See you next month for ten more words!
If you enjoy my writing, considering subscribing to get articles sent directly to your email! We also appreciate contributions via Ko-Fi to help keep this website ad-free.
Scripting Japan 
4 Comments