Japanese Slang (31 page)

•   
Anta no toshi de kaimaku shinagara shoshagy
suru to wa!
At your age observing curtained shells while copying out sutras!
(At your age to be peeking and playing with yourself, really!)

Dongai
(shell coveter) is a priest who is excessively interested in female organs.

* * *

After scouring through school grounds, dump-truck yards, monasteries, and downtown dives, the linguists venture into rougher neighborhoods ready to seek out and interview the fiercest urban gangsters, the Yakuza. Since the government's anti-mob activities of 1993 and 1994 these gangsters have become less visible, but once contact has been made, the Westerners are surprised at the scintillating private vocabularies they encounter among different gangs.

The Yakuza hierarchy runs the gamut from the most junior members, the
chinpira
(pricks) and the tough
teppodama
(bullets), usually in their twenties, all the way up to the grand
oyabun
(paternal part), the gang's godfather. Each gang level has its favorite words. When it comes to vaginas, the Yakuza gangs turn out to be a repository of old and elegant idioms, with generation after generation of gangsters learn-ing the rigid classical jargon of their elders. Beautiful expressions like
shumon
(orange gate),
saya
(sheath),
fuji-san
(Mount Fuji), and even
maku no uchi
(“behind the curtains,” curtains in this case referring to the woman's panties), dot the speech of the most ruthless criminals.

•   
Tsugi ni ore s
, ano ko no shumon ni yubi suberasetan da.
Then the next thing I did was to stick my fingers up her orange gate.

•   
Ore ga itta ato, kanojo jibun de saya fuite yagatta.
After I came she wiped her own sheath.

•   
Ano ko wa sonna kantan ni fuji-san akewatasu y
na anna ja nai yo.
She's not the type of woman to give her Mount Fuji away so easily.

Yakuza slang is fanatically nationalistic and steers clear of foreign words, especially when it comes to vaginas. Even the youngest Yakuza recruits, fresh out of high school, avoid trendy American imports such as
pushii
(pussy) and
suritto
(slit). When given the choice in referring to vaginas, Japanese slang speakers generally prefer using terms for salty sea creatures. Among the Yakuza novices, however, some of the most popular words for the female organ involve fruits:
momo
(peach), sometimes referred to by rougher boys as
kemomo
(hair peach),
suika
(watermelon),
uri
(melon), the Japanese
akebi
fruit, and
amaguri
(roasted chestnut).
Ichijiku
(fig) is the only fruit that the young Yakuza also tolerate in its English form,
fuiku.

•   
N
! Ana onna no toshi de kemomo nureru to omou ka?
Tell me, d'you think her snatch still gets wet at her age?

•   
Kono bokashi tondemo n
yo na! Ore honmono no suika ga mitai yo!
Man, this censoring is too much! I wanna see some real watermelon!

•   
Shinjirareru ka? Kanojo kurutta y
ni ichijiku ijikurimawashiteta!
Would you believe it? She was frigging away at her fig like crazy!

•   
Atashi fuiku ni atarashii kokeshi irete mitan dakedo—sugoi yokatta wa!
I stuck that new vibrator up my fig—it was ace!

As gangsters get older, the words they use for the female organ get heftier. In middle-aged criminal circles fruity idioms give way to boggy, marshy images such as
numa
(swamp),
oka
(hill),
otoshiana
(“pit-fall,” for very large organs),
tani
(valley), and
ichi no tani
(first valley).

•   
Ore-tachi sutoripp
no numa nogashita ya na. Pantii nugan
n da mon!
We didn't get to see the stripper's swamp. She kept her panties on!

•   
Atarashii sutoripp
no otoshiana mita? Sug
!
Did you see the new stripper's pitfall? Hot!

The single most fashionable swamp word in the underworld is the ancient
yachi
(bog). In some gang jargons
yachi
appears in its inverted form
chiya,
which has also developed into a shorter form,
cha.
Over the centuries
yachi
has given rise to a remarkable list of organ-related expressions:
yachigakushi
(bog hiding), for instance, is one of the rougher words for panties, and
yachineta
(bog news) is pornography.
Yachihakui
(bog in white) is the accomplished organ of a mature woman, while
yachikoro
(rolling the bog),
yachiseme
(invading the bog),
yachikameru
(crawling into the bog), and
yachikeri
(plowing the bog), are rowdy words for sex.
Yachigari
(twat kid) is a harsh and very unkind name for a pre-teen girl.