If you follow my blog, you know my most regular posting content deals with new/online Japanese slang. This post is different though, as I’m going to change my focus and talk about old dude/ossan slang. Why? Well, a few days ago, I came across the tweet you see below. The tweet is from 2022, but went viral (48K likes, if you search おっさんビジネス用語 on Twitter people are still talking about it) as a bingo chart for use in “bullshit meeting with nothing-to-do”, with the goal being to get bingo by ticking off all the old-man-business-terms you hear around you.
But here’s the thing: I realized I didn’t know what most of the terms on this bingo chart meant. How odd. I’ve been spending all this time cataloguing youth slang, but I’m completely at a loss regarding the slang of the baby-boomer era Japanese workforce. And while the terms on the bingo chart are all presumably a bit old, they still are in use and worth covering, as if they weren’t why would you put them on a bingo chart? It would be impossible to win! So join me now on a journey into おっさんビジネス用語! Whether you want to impress your older working peers, sound incredibly lame to your younger coworkers, or just kill time in your own くそ暇な会議, this overview is for you. And as we’ll see, some of these terms actually aren’t even restricted to a business context, and may even, albeit rarely, pop up in your day-to-day conversations in Japan(ese). This overview is a bit longer than my usual ones, so let’s break things down by rows:
Row One
Word One: We begin at the top left with 一丁目一番地 (いっちょうめいちばんち, House 1 Block 1). This lengthy term refers to something that needs to be handled first, or is of upmost importance. This use of the word is at least 40 years old. The “business” definition already appears in major dictionaries, and according to this 2011 Nikkei piece can be traced back to newspapers from the 1980s. So while I normally caution using slang terms because you’ll sound like a bit of an otaku, or a member of a fandom, this time my caution is different. For all of these posts, using them will make you sound like an middle aged salaryman.
For a simple example of use of 一丁目一番地 in action, let’s check out this next tweet. Here, a person is responding to a Japanese politician’s call for the end of paid school lunches, calling this policy the 一丁目一番地 for 子育て支援. In other words, the first and/or most important thing to tackle to deal with to support raising children.
Our next example is a bit more contextually complex, but again has a fairly clear meaning. The quoted tweet from “CareerCamp” talks about a young person who hates working in sales due to bad experiences. The quoter responds by stating that this hatred of sales is caused by companies who try to brush things under the rug with “that’s just how it is talk”, which young students buy into. The replier then laments this situation, noting how “sales is the first and foremost in business = 営業はビジネスの一丁目一番地”, and that they want people to think sales is something fun rather than awful.
Obviously, 一丁目一番地 (like all the terms I’ll cover here) is heavily associated with talk about business and work. So if you try to invigorate the term by using it in a new context to say something like “denying the enemy team resources in this MOBA is 一丁目一番地” I’m not sure how people would respond. I don’t quite think that’s an accepted use of the phrase based on what I saw while researching the term, even if it theoretically makes sense.
Amusingly though, and I don’t know if this project is related to the slang phrase or not, there’s also a person going around taking pictures of real 一丁目一番地. Apparently there’s more than few out there in Japan. Well, actually, by “more than a few” I suppose I mean “more than 400”. And this person is committed to documenting them. I guess for them, cataloguing all the 一丁目一番地 is 一丁目一番地.
Word Two: The next term on our list is ざっくばらん. This term simply means “frank” or “direct”, and is one of the few I’d heard before. I didn’t know it was associated with おっさん though, so I might stop using it. Well, at least until I’m a bit older. But if you thought 一丁目一番地 was old at 40 years though buckle up, because Kotobanku traces ざっくばらん back to 1767. Unsurprisingly then, some people don’t agree that ざっくばらん is actually old man business lingo, as it’s got a bit too much history for that.
(We’ll talk about yoshinani too)
There are a few theories as to the origin. One is that it was a combination of the mimetic terms zakkuri (roughly) and barari (fall apart into pieces) into zakkuribarari, which then got shortened to ざっくばらん. Another theory posits that the phrase 四角張る (しかくばる, to be angular/formal) in its negative form 四角張らぬ (not be angular/formal) became sakubaran and then さっくばらん.
Regardless of where it comes from though, the term is generally treated as a な adjective now. So if you want to say that you will “speak frankly” you can describe that as ざっくばらんに like this guy below…
…and you can also refer to something that is frank or blunt as ざっくばらんな. Like if you have a frank talk with your work friend, you might call it a ざっくばらんな話.
Word 3: Our third word, 鉛筆なめなめ (えんぴつなめなめ, pencil licking) is one of my favorites. The phrase usually refers to the practice of fudging numbers for some purpose, often an illegal one (e.g., to balance the books). The idea comes from the fact that you used to have to lick cheap pencils to get them to write easily. Unlike our first two words, 鉛筆なめなめ seems like its quite fossilized if not on the way to death. If you look up the term now, you’ll just find people talking about the bingo chart above. But if you go back a few years, you can see clear examples, such as this post spelling the term’s meaning out clearly to express doubts about China’s economic pronouncements.
The term doesn’t have to be financial number-fudging though, even if that’s the main use. Here we see a teacher critique artificial grading curves which use “pencil licking” to create a ranked order.
And here’s it’s just a general “fudging of numbers” meaning appearing in a post worrying about the quality of earthquake stress-testing of buildings.
There’s a similar term, そば屋の出前 (そばやのでまえ), that is also worth noting here as it came up a lot in discussions of 鉛筆なめなめ: the term means to blow off pressure with a “oh it’s fine, almost done” answer. The phrase refers to the idea that when you call a soba delivery (a 出前) about where your order is, they always say “it’s on the way”.
Also, I should note that there are some people claiming that 鉛筆なめなめ means “to write really hard” or, by extension, to think about something really hard, rather than to mess with data. From what I can tell, this is a bit of a minority take, but, hey, it is out there. There are articles that mention it, and I did note uses online in my data searching. For instance, when this next poster talks about “parents sitting by their child’s side, licking pencils, suffering with them, delighting with them, while they study” as something that motivates learning, I’m pretty sure they aren’t talking about cooking the books. Rather, they are referring to hard work/thought.
Likewise, this person’s joke about “licking WordPress” being a modern update of “licking pencils” explicitly references the “write/think while writing” meaning.
So although this “write/work/think hard” meaning is absolutely the minority one, it is best to recognize that a second understanding of 鉛筆なめなめ is out there in the wild before you take your boss to court for forcing you to do fraud if they suggest you do a bit of pencil licking.
Word 4: えいや, sometimes written as エイヤ, is a term with the generic (non-ossan-bijinesu-yougo) meaning something of like “go for it” or “heave ho!”. So it’s a shout, sort of like よっしゃ! As a slang business phrase though, usually in the form えいやで, the cry evolved to mean “doing something with a lot of spirit (but… not much attention to detail)”.
At it’s best, えいやで therefore works like 適当に or なんとなく, as in this person noting how they were a bit tired so they just ran えいやで.
Here’s a similar post , where “playing it by ear = エイヤで決める” is advocated over planning a trip out too much, getting your hopes up, and then ending up disappointed.
In a more negative use though, words like “slipshod”, “half-assed”, or “rushed” all kind of work as a translation. So this next person is not really complimenting their model as something done by feel or whim, but rather saying it was done poorly or quickly in the interest of saving time.
Word 5: Our last word on the first row, 交通整理 (こうつうせいり, traffic adjustment) normally means when police etc. control the flow of traffic to ensure that everything runs smoothly. By extension then, in business 交通整理 is just taking a complicated situation and making sure everything ends up working okay by handing out responsibilities, giving orders, simplifying things, etc. We can see a straightforward example below, where someone notes how their teacher is only interested in the year they are in charge of, so “there is no one to properly direct traffic” and therefore it’s become a “idiot library service”. I don’t have specific context of what exactly is happening in the school, but certainly we can understand that whatever is going on is chaotic and bad.
Row Two
Word 6: While 全員野球 might seem like it’s just literally “everyone plays baseball”, as company baseball teams are a thing, it actually refers to an act of people all coming together for any communal effort. So, metaphorically “everyone plays baseball”. Oh, hey, we say “play ball” in a similar way in English too don’t we? Interesting.
Anyway, 全員野球 is another phrase on the chart which seems pretty well established, as it appears in major dictionaries, and it’s pretty easy to understand. Like a pop group and a rapper coming together to achieve “complete victory”? That’s “everyone baseball” for you.
Even more simply, here’s a radio show about to start the day. How? Well as a baseball team, of course!
So 全員野球 is certainly a business term, but it’s arguably no longer restricted to that context alone. If both corporations and hip-hop/pop music crossovers are using a word, it might just be worth treating as a pretty normal phrase.
Word 7: The word よしなに is another one that’s been around long enough to appear in major dictionaries. This adverb refers to doing something properly or well, especially to achieve a desired outcome. Apparently the term has quite a history, being traceable to the speech of courtesans in the Heian Period and seen in literature from the 1600s. In fact, that source I just linked claims it could even have been used back in the Kojiki. Minimally, since it’s officially recorded use, the term has historically had an air of politeness, being used often to ask requests of people of higher status.
So how is よしなに being used now? Well, one common way is to request people to follow you or connect with you online after you post a bunch of images of things you like. Seriously, this is so common I found 3 in a row without any effort. Here, the “kindly” or polite meaning is pretty clearly being maintained.
This “よしなに＝よろしく” style use is the most common online from what I can tell, and people clearly link it to uses in “old Japan” themed games. In more “real” interactions though, the term just kind of has a “I’ll do it properly” feel to it rather than a “I request of you politely” impression. Like in this next interaction, you can see WHITE saying that a place is a bit hard to get to so BLUE should look things up in advance. BLUE assures WHITE that they will do it “よしなに = properly and/or with the necessary steps”, walking there and taking a cab home.
Word 8: Our either word, 空中戦 (くうちゅうせん), is literally just an aerial battle. So what does this mean in the workplace? Well, an argument that flies around in the air – because nothing was written down on paper – and accomplishes nothing, leaving everyone feeling like they’ve learned and/or solved nothing. The phrase is mentioned in articles dating back to at least 2008, and entered dictionaries by at least 2013, so we are dealing with a pretty established term here. But not, of course, “might have come from the Kojiki” level established.
Unfortunately though, searching for “空中戦” to find examples in use is tricky, because it obviously most commonly brings up pictures of actual aerial dogfights. But there is some clear “business use” flying around (ha!) too. While the use in this next example is less critical than the definitions I’ve presented above, you can clearly see this writer describe “talking about thoughts” as “aerial battle-ish”. In contrast, the “managers’ reforms” conducted as “land battles” are described as more “real”. So “air battles” are inferior here, but not explicitly bad.
Generally speaking though, 空中戦 are seen as a negative thing, as you can see by searching for 空中戦 and 会議 together. Here’s someone attacking a long-deleted article for basically having no chance of ending up anything but an “aerial battle” due to the difference in fields of the people involved.
Similarly, here’s a complaint about how people don’t set up meetings to cater to the needs of people with hearing/seeing disabilities and then complain about these individuals. One difficulty the author notes is that when these individuals want to move the meeting along, an “aerial battle starts”, creating something which is confusing, hard to follow, and ultimately not worth attending to… but of course you only realize that after.
To wrap up this warfare, here’s just a really clean definition. A 空中戦 is something that has no letters, no order, just “this and that”. Perhaps fun to observe, but no real victory.
While business meetings are notorious for being… let’s say longer than they need to be, it’s probably best to make sure yours stays “on the ground”. Step one to avoiding a 空中戦 appears to be just having things written down, giving structure to things and notes to take away.
Word 9: The samurai-looking phrase 仁義を切る (じんぎをきる, literally “cut duty”) refers first and foremost to special greetings among gamblers, gangsters, and the like. It’s actual origin though is rooted in Confucianism, where it refers to doing/protecting what is morally just, but like many “justice” phrases its been adopted by a more criminal element. So when you see someone talking about a shirt like this and referencing 仁義を切る, well you can probably assume “oh okay yakuza stuff”.
In the business realm though, the phrase is much more innocent, although related to the same origin: to do the proper greetings and other activities (such as the transmission of information) required for a business plan or project to move smoothly. In short, “to greet” and/or “to contact/convey”. So when someone tells you the first thing you should do is “cut duty”, they want you to go make proper introductions. Assuming that someone is your 社長 and not a guy in a black suit with a full back tattoo.
In contrast, when this next post (which is cut from a thread, ignore the らちが start) mentions how writing “I’ll send the information via SMS” is how they “cut duty”, they are talking more about the more “get things done to move along the business plan” meaning.
The phrase therefore has a bit of contextual variation, being applicable to a wide range of business situations. The throughline though is just that the activity helps things move along smoothly, setting up your business plan for success.
Word 10: Obviously, 握る normally just means “to grip”, or “to grasp”, or to do the gestures necessary to make おにぎり and the like. So what’s our “old man business” use? Well, quite simply, to hash out ideas/details with customers and/or involved parties so that everyone is in agreement. So rather than a one-sided order, to 握る involves making sure everyone is on the same page and happy with how things are going. This page lists synonyms like “building a good relationship”, “laying groundwork”, and “matching mindsets”. The noun form 握り is then this “groundwork” itself, while the negative 握らない, as you can see used in the sentence below, means, well, not doing the necessary groundwork.
Oddly, despite 握る being one of the more recognized terms here (Google 握る ビジネス and see how many results pop up), it’s tricky to find good examples outside of articles explaining the word. Why? Well, as you might guess, it’s just because there are way too many other uses of 握る out there that are more popular and normalized. I did find some clear business uses, it just required combining 握る with words like 顧客 or other terms referring to customers. Searching 握る on its own was fruitless, with the term definitely not common enough to show up among discussions of “grasping” and making onigiri.
But here’s one really clear use in of 握る I did find: the post uses the term in reference to “Field Sales”, and how they require first “thinking deeply about how the customer can get results through the service”, and then 顧客と握る, which we might translate as “hashing it out” or “reaching an understanding”.
All in all, 握る seems like a well recognized and useful business phrase that just is really hard to study in depth because it looks exactly like a common term. There were more recent articles defining and discussing the term than any of the others I covered here so far. So if your boss tells you that you should 握る with a customer, they probably aren’t asking you to squeeze them.
Row 3
Word 11: The term なるはや is evidence that lots of Japanese people, be they young girls, 2chan users, or businessmen nearing retirement, really like shortening words. The word comes from taking なるべくはやく (ASAP) and just cutting off an “unnecessary” 3/7ths of it. Unlike some of the other phrases here, なるはや doesn’t overlap at all with any extant terms, so we can actually use Google Trends to see when it started. The data is a bit fuzzy, but it looks like consistent use began around 2008 or 2009. Minimally, 2009 is a flashpoint, and the phrase has certainly taken off since 2015. So if there is one term people in your office might know these days, なるはや has some of the highest odds of the 11 words I’ve described so far…
…although maybe you shouldn’t? As this person notes a bad reaction to their use of なるはや…
…and these two people note なるはや as just as horrible as “sideways letters business terms”, which basically means “terms from English”. If you’re confused, peppering your speech with English borrowings is generally seen as a rather lame practice enjoyed by some in business.
Okay, so least 18 people in Japan hate なるはや, we’ve confirmed. Oh wait… we have to add 22 more.
If you’re wondering why I’m ragging on なるはや, it’s because literally I found more complaints about the phrase than uses of it. Clearly, なるはや is being used though. A word has to be used quite a bit for people to complain about it this much.
So how should you use なるはや if you want to despite all this critique? Well, in its actual grammatical application, なるはや almost always appears in the form なるはやで. Here’s about as straightforward an application as you can get, with the phrase basically meaning “I’ll go ASAP”.
Here’s another use of なるはや, but this time recalling an actual conversation. This post is from a Twitter thread, so a bit of context is missing, but the important part is just what I copied below. The person who posted the tweet asked someone “do you want me to publish this?”, and the person they were talking to used なるはやで to answer “yes, ASAP”.
Besides that I can trace なるはや back to at least 2006, that’s about all there is to say about it. So I’m going to go to the next word, なるはやで.
Word 12: If you looked at いってこい and though, “wait, isn’t that just ‘go and come back’ but in a kind of rude, imperative form?”, well… I mean, yeah. That’s one use. But いってこい isn’t on the bingo sheet for that reason, although the overlap between the “order form” and the “business form” of いってこい is a potential source of confusion even for Japanese people. Rather, we have stumbled upon another “repurposed” term here. In the おっさんビジネス用語 world, いってこい is something like “swings and roundabouts”, “two steps forward, two steps back”, or “the two things cancel out”. Basically, いってこい describes a situation where a good thing and a bad thing have happened, leaving you kind in the middle with some issues solved and others still far from over. Apparently the first uses were in the world of sales, where いってこい described a drop which put you back where you were after a recent increase. So, not good, but not bad either.
We can see a simple example of いってこい above: I don’t know what the author means by “even if you go with blue” , but the rest of the message is clear. The writer notes how if you consult a tax specialist, what you save in taxes will end up いってこい. That is, the cost of the consultation etc. will basically even out any savings, so doing whatever “blue” is ends up a bit +/- 0. This person’s use of いってこい as a noun appears to be the most common approach, as we can see echoed by this next person’s shock about the… aggressive? nature of their いってこい.
The word does have some flexibility to its use though. As you saw above, katakana representation is fine. There are verb forms too, like below, which take いってこい and slap する on the end.
Word 14: I’m going to call ロハ word 14 so that I end with 25 words instead of 24. Let’s pretend “free space” is Word 13. While ロバ is a donkey, ロハ means “free”, so a ロハなロバ would be a free donkey. Actually though, that probably isn’t how most people would say “free donkey”. While it does seem like people generally treat ロハ as a な adjective, it’s rarely used to modify nouns. I won’t say never, because here’s an example of ロハな:
But I quite struggled to find many other clear ロハな cases to be honest, which surprised me. The ロハの construction is even rarer, so despite the minimal use of ロハな「NOUN」 constrictions, treating ロハ as a な-adjective is the norm. It’s just that the ロハな「NOUN」use is far eclipsed by the ロハで「VERB」construction, which indicates that you did the verb without paying any money.
Interestingly, it looks like the meaning of ロハ can be flipped to mean “for free” as in “without getting money” too. The post below, for example, talks about how they don’t want to work into the evening “ロハで”.
ロハに, another adverb form, is also well established to indicate a verb is done for free. The phrase ロハなので is also quite common for “because it’s free”.
Where does ロハ come from then? No one is 100% sure, but the most common explanation is that it’s a break down of the kanji for ただ (“free”): 只 becomes ロハ. The other explanations, such as that it’s from German, seem less likely. But hey, I gave you the link, so decide for yourself.
There’s one bit of confusion to mention though. In 2015, a Korean boy band group called ASTRO appeared, and have gained popularity in Japan. Their fan club is called アロハ which, you guessed it, becomes ロハ for short. So when people say ロハに when mentioning Astro, like below, they are thanking the fan club/the band, not talking about price. Likewise ロハなので can mean “because it’s related to ASTRO”, “because I’m an ASTRO fan”, etc. Unlikely to see either at your workplace, but if your boss has an ASTRO flag on his wall be careful of how you interpret their use of ロハ.
Word 15: Our last word in row three, ツーカー, refers to the idea that two people don’t need to even speak to understand each other. The term is on the older end, as it originates around 1965. The most common explanation of ツーカー is that it’s a shortening of 「つう」と言えば「かあ」と答える. Or “if they say tsuu, the other says kaa“. That probably still doesn’t make sense, so to give more detail: つぅ is from つぅことだ, or ということだ (“that’s how it is”), which is responded to with そうかぁ (“ah, is that right?”). There are a few more theories out there, but that’s the big one.
Mainly speaking, ツーカー is treated as a noun. We can see a simple example of use as a noun in action below, when someone notes how they think Julia Roberts and Takayuki Suzui look alike. I don’t see it, but sure, fine. The important part is that in response to the author stating this opinion, their husband asked “Who is Suzui?”. This made the poster really want to talk with someone who is more aware of Suzui’s career. The replier (blue) is aware of Suzui, which OP shows their excitement about by saying “I always wanted this ツーカー feeling”. So ツーカー doesn’t have to be an actual situation where two people communicate without speaking, but rather just one where they are vibeing.
That said, there are uses where the “without speaking” element of ツーカー is stressed. This comic below, for instance, is going hard on the “unspoken understanding” meaning. It’s like a yakuza joke, I think.
A common phrasing you’ll see based on ツーカー is ツーカーの仲 (なか), which refers to a pair of people who “get” each other. Here’s a clear example that basically references the manga above’s depiction. The person writes that “when you are ツーカーの仲” you can just say “that” an communication is successful, but a third party wouldn’t understand. This makes “talking to someone you don’t know well as if they are close” a problematic experience.
The word ツーカー is only sometimes verbed, but it can be! Like if you want to say you’re a fan of “people who somehow find common ground with the protagonist despite being completely different”… well then this next example sentence might help you out a lot.
Row 4
Word 16: The phrase 決めの問題 appears in situations where there are a number of options and none of them are clearly the best or the worst. Like, maybe one option is pretty sloppy but can be done within your deadline, while the other is more reliable but time consuming. In these cases, depending on who you ask, 決めの問題 is used to either pass off responsibility to the boss or just to mean “as a decision making group, let’s just go by feeling then“. You can see both conceptions in the images below.
“When the best choice isn’t clear so the person with power decides”
In either case, there’s definitely a feel of “let’s just get a choice going because otherwise nothing will happen and we won’t know if we made the right one until we try” to 決めの問題. While all the terms here are in theory “business phrases”, a number of people talk about 決めの問題 as being a phrase that appears specifically in the world of IT.
Obviously 決めの問題 appears most during actual discussions, but we can find some clear uses of it on Twitter too beyond just the people defining it that I showed above. This next post, for instance, is a dialogue about whether people should quit work when they get kids. The author notes that they think staying at your job is best, as working alone (or, “with one horse’s power” as they phrase it) is risky. Ultimately though, the author notes that this is ご夫婦の決めの問題. To wit: there are demerits and merits, and the ultimate decision lies with the party most directly involved.
Here’s one of the oddest examples I stumbled across: a discussion of the different ways to pronounce “Gerry” and related (nick)names. As the author notes, the pronunciation is ultimately up to the person with the name (本人). I guess that there’s not really a (de)merit to a specific name, so that’s why 決めの問題 works here, although it seems a bit odd to me since the sort of “we discussed and can’t decide” element is gone. Again though, what I’m showcasing in this blog is use, not “rules”, so if there’s a use that doesn’t match general definitions that’s doubly interesting.
Here’s a “not in a meeting” example that does clearly fit in the definitions of 決めの問題 I talked about earlier though, at least in my opinion: things that aren’t illegal by law but must be decided by society. These things are, as the author writes, 決めの問題 which reflect social cultures and norms. An interesting perspective, and an interesting way to use the phrase.
Pretty much all the words I’ve covered here have their detractors, as people don’t really like おっさんビジネス用語. But I want to note that there’s lots of detractors of 決めの問題. So be sure not to use it to pass off responsibility, as that seems to be a common tactic that draws a lot of ire.
Anyway, 決めの問題 is a bit of a weird one, as it’s by far the most context dependent word on this bingo chart. I can’t say I feel confident using it even after doing this research, but at least I think I could react to it properly if I hear it. And, I mean, after all, the right place to use this phrase is a 決めの問題 writ large.
Word 17: If you know your kanji, you might be amused at 寝技 (ねわざ) as it looks a bit like “sleeping art”. Is 寝技 dozing off at work where your boss can’t see then? Unfortunately, no. The word 寝技 has a “real” meaning of “ground work”, or martial arts techniques performed on the ground (usually during some kind of grapple). In this use, 寝技 are especially associated with judo. So when this next person talks about their dog doing 寝技 with a toy in picture 3, they aren’t doing any conversations related to おっさんビジネス用語. Rather, the dog is just kicking the toy’s butt (on the ground).
I guess there’s a bit of an implication of these “ground techniques” being tricky or sly, as in the business world 寝技 is underhanded (or at least not fully in line with best practice) ways of getting things done. While the meaning is straightforward, this is another word that was tricky to find good examples of. The first issue is that 寝技 is mostly used relating to martial arts, as expected. So if you search for it, most posts are showcasing two people fighting. The second issue is that while people will talk about 寝技, they tend not to give examples, so there isn’t good context to explain their tweets. So let’s just stick to one example which actually does include context, as it involves an interaction.
In the above dialogue, the first poster discusses how former PM Suga decided to loosen COVID restrictions rather than resign. The second poster then describes this as “Suga’s ‘floor technique'” to avoid critique. That is, something which has a bit of an underhanded goal. So the idea isn’t that the actions are illegal or anything, but that they are done with an ulterior motive, or in a way that isn’t completely “above board”, rather than because Suga believed that loosening restrictions was the best thing to do.
The opposite of 寝技, or proper methods, are called 立ち技 (たちわざ). This is also a martial arts term, but its business use to mean that everything is “above board” has been around since at least 2012.
What’s done over drinks is ne-waza.
Word 18: Our first onomatopoeia sounding term on the bingo chart is ガラガラポン, which relates to a type of gambling machine. Not a ガチャポン, but an older type that spins and spits out a ball. Often for bingo! Appropriately enough.
In one of the most direct borrowings we’ve seen so far then, ガラガラポン in the business world can just mean to decide via lottery. If you have too many deadlines stacked up, for instance, you might decide by random chance, as suggested here in the phrase ガラガラポンで. Note the date of the tweet at 2013. Since ガラガラポン are a thing that exists outside of the business context, there’s no way to detect the start of the business-specific use available to me, but we can see at least 10 years of use here.
There’s a second meaning of ガラガラポン too though, which is a bit more surprising: to completely replace, or to start from scratch. Here’s an example of this use of ガラガラポン as a verb in the passive form, appearing in a comment discussing the difficulties of politics. The phrasing of ガラガラポンされたら here notes basically “if everything is messed up/sent back to stage one”, in which case “our lives will become a mess”.
To counter out that empathy to politicians example, here’s someone complaining about politics using ガラガラポン. Their employment of ガラガラポンしないと is used to state that opinion that the entire government basically needs to be restarted for any real change to happen.
So ガラガラポン has a few distinct meanings and uses we need to be aware of at the end of the day, but none are too complex in terms of grammar or meaning. Just make sure you choose your meaning carefully, rather than by ガラガラポン methods.
Word 19: Two onomatopoeia in a row? Indeed, because がっちゃんこ is the “sound” of taking two ideas and combining them into one. Did you imagine がっちゃんこ therefore being what it sounds like when two things are slamming together? Well, that’s a bit off, because がっちゃんこ actually comes from the sound a stapler makes.
Generally speaking, がっちゃんこ is used with する as a compound verb. And it isn’t restricted to the business world at all. Like this person who uses がっちゃんこして to talk about creating a new Spiderman model out of two distinct ones is certainly not discussing their job:
But you can use がっちゃんこ in a more “professional” setting too, to discuss, say, the coming together of “a person who is good at coming up with new ideas and a person who is good at filling the gaps in things”.
The passive form がっちゃんこされる is sometimes used too, but again not in any strictly business sense. This reply to someone whose birthday was on January 4th notes that they probably got birthday presents and otoshidama at the same time via using がっちゃんこされる.
Out of the 19 words so far, がっちゃんこ seems to be the most “not-just-business” so far. All the others had mostly “formal” contexts dominating their examples, but がっちゃんこ is just out there in the wild doing its own thing. As a result, perhaps our bingo chart is a がっちゃんこ of business terms and phrases that are just out in day-to-day Japan?
Word 20: The phrase ダマでやる is a fun one, as it comes from a rather unexpected place: Mahjong. In this game tenpai refers to when you are 1 tile/card away from winning. Now in this situation, you can call riichi, which is like saying “uno” in Uno, or you can keep quiet… and this latter choice is called damaten (with dama coming from 黙, or “silent”). Apparently choosing whether to stay silent or call riichi is part of the strategy, which you can read more about here. I can’t explain it more, because everything I know about Mahjong I just learned to write the current paragraph.
So before I state something horribly incorrect about ダマでやる in the Mahjong world,, let’s move on to the business world, where ダマでやる draws on this Mahjong strategy to mean “to move towards victory/completion without announcing it”. Use of ダマでやる here doesn’t have to be nefarious, although it certainly can be. But if you do a job quietly without telling anyone until its over, perhaps just to not allow other companies to get wind of it and steal/copy ideas, that is absolutely still ダマで. Here’s a really straightforward example:
There’s not a lot else too ダマでやる, but let’s do one more example just because I think I found a kind of interesting sentence. Assuming this tweet isn’t actually about mahjong, the phrasing here combines both damade and riichi as metaphors to mean something like “it’s beautiful when people are getting everything done quietly but then announce near success and climb/win”.
Hmm… now that I reread that tweet, maybe it was about mahjong. Oh well, on to Row 5!
Row 5
Word 21: And we are almost at the end with ペライチ！ You are just about ready to play bingo now, how exciting for you at your next incredibly boring meeting! While it’s easy to get ペライチ confused with the ペライチ a website creation service, more casually (and maybe originally) a ペライチ is anything that is just one page. The origin comes from the phrase ぺらっと一枚だけ, or “just flipping down one page”, and, hey, that origin might be related to the aforementioned website creation service too.
So when it comes to materials, you can refer to anything as ペライチ if all the information is just on one piece of paper and/or slide. This person who was asked to make a “ペライチ” of BTS’s media strategy in 1 hour was therefore asked to make a single diagram/print out… and they did it!
These sorts of documents/slides are also sometimes referred to as ペライチ資料 as well, as you can see in this next tweet:
When used to describe a website, ペライチ can be just a single page website or like a landing page which has most of the information on it. So something like this:
Again though, remember that ペライチ is now a company, so ペライチで作る can just mean “made with Paraichi”.
Word 22: The word 突貫工事 (とっかんこうじ) is another one of those “already exists terms”. Our original meaning this time is “rapid construction”. Unsurprisingly then, in business the phrase just means “something done in a short period of time”. Well, actually, just like がっちゃんこ this phrase isn’t restricted to businesses or older people at all really, as you can see in this next use of がっちゃんこ to refer to an animation. I guess the author is being a bit humble, because it doesn’t look rushed to me, but using a slang term for calling your art “bad” to brag is nothing new really on the Japanese internet.
You can use 突貫工事 as verb too though, which just means “to do quickly”.
While that’s all pretty easy to understand, I guess I should mention two odd little trends. I saw more than a few people using the phrase 突貫工事しゅーりょー to mean “quick work over” with the kind of odd re-spelling of 終了 attached at the end. I don’t know if it’s all just chance, like maybe a bunch of people just slapped the two bits together thinking they were original, but I saw enough that it feels like a bit of a minor fad/collocation worth noting.
A second fad that appeared a lot is the phrase 突貫工事したった. This use takes 突貫工事 and attaches a 2chan phrase/meme to it, wherein you take the してやった・してしまった (“did it”) ending and change it to したった. You can read about this ～したった slang verb here. The ending can be attached to any noun really, but people really like attaching it to 突貫工事. At the end of the day, this is probably all just chance, but there were enough examples that I felt I should flag it.
Clearly then, 突貫工事 is another member of the business vocab bingo chart that is not at all restricted to the business realm. But given the literal meaning deals with construction, I wouldn’t be surprised if business speak is the origin, even if nowadays it basically looks like normal netslang.
Word 23: A ポンチ絵 (ぽんちえ) references a picture from the classic magazine Punch. While Punch, which appeared in some forms in Japan, was full of cartoons more specifically, in the business word a ポンチ絵 (Punch picture) is just used to reference any kind of sketch or illustration used to explain something simply. Well, in theory. Here’s a ポンチ絵 that’s “bad”.
Here’s one that’s… also bad? But bad in a different way, and is a good example because it shows how sketch-like ポンチ絵 can be.
And here’s someone noting how modeling software, especially ones that let you “deform” the items a bit, are great for simple “Punch pictures” of molecules.
That said, ポンチ絵 can also be complex. The point of a ポンチ絵 isn’t simplicity, but rather that “one look and you get it”. As in this impact of this architecture design you see below, where the intended impact (and ability to deceive citizens apparently?) is clear at first glance:
Make sure you don’t mix up the spelling and call a ポンチ絵 a パンチ絵 though, because that’s just a picture of a punch.
Word 24: We have our second term borrowed from baseball! Surprising, given that we are discussing Japanese business. A ポテンヒット in Japanese baseball refers to a “Texas Leaguer“, or a pop/bloop hit that falls between an infielder and an outfielder yet nevertheless ends up a base hit. If that doesn’t make sense to you, I’m sorry, as I know just as much about baseball as mahjong. The Japanese name ポテンヒット is just an onomatopoeia really, as something can ぽてんと or ぽとんと落ちる when it falls a bit unimpressively.
In a business setting, a ポテンヒット is instead, although obviously by extension, when a job/task gets ignored/put aside in a state where no one really knows who is supposed to do it. So, just like the ball, it’s fallen and no one (infield or outfield) is really sure who it belongs to.
Like a lot of other terms borrowed from other settings, ポテンヒット is tough to show examples of because most uses online relate to the original meaning. But when this person says they are going to make sure there are no ポテンヒット at work today, they mean nothing left over without clear responsibility as to whose it is.
Likewise, when this person describes what they want to do as their ideal job, they note how they want to “fill holes” and “pick up ポテンヒット”. That is, their dream is to do the tasks that have been left over because no one is sure who should do them (or maybe, as they note, become able to communicate that they need to get done).
And here’s a final, really clear example that shows the term being used back as far as 2011.
^This attitude creates ポテンヒット
From what I can tell, ポテンヒット is almost always a noun. So while it describes a something what has been left in limbo, you can’t use it to say “put something in limbo”. Anyway, the ポテンヒット for finishing this overview is on me so let’s move on…
Word 25: ..to where we are finally at the place where you can play おっさんビジネス用語ビンゴ! Our last word is 正直ベース (しょうじきベース), which fortunately is an easy one. The term just means “honestly”, or literally “with honesty as the base”, and appears usually in the form 正直ベースで[verb]. The verb is usually something that means “say”, as in 正直ベースで言う…
…正直ベースで言えば…
….or 申し上げる for a polite yet slangy version.
There are some adverbial uses too though. Like you can “talk” in a 正直ベースに (or 気味に) if you speak honestly…
…or, if you want to encourage people to “live honestly” you can say 正直ベースに生きる.
And there you go! You can now play old-man-business-lingo-bingo! As you can see, some of these terms have definitely left the business world, while others are near death and/or quite restricted to a small group of office workers. So do be careful using these terms, as whether they will be understood is not the only question: there’s also the risk of how you will be perceived. Some seem pretty universal, but others might mark you as the ossan. But hey, if that’s your goal, more power to you! I wish you great success in a rousing presentation where other people pull out their old-man-business-lingo-bingo charts after you start speaking.
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Scripting Japan 