Every year dictionary publisher U-CAN announces the most popular buzzwords for the past year, slang words which appear suddenly and are likely to fade away just as quickly, and the official list for 2011 was released yesterday. The list of popular new words included sumaho, an abbreviation for smartphones, which really took off this year; Nadeshiko Japan, the soccer team that won the FIFA 2011 Women’s World Cup; and “Tiger Mask,” which began when an anonymous kind soul donated school backpacks to orphans under the name of a classic anime character, and was quickly imitated by many others. Buzzwords related to the terrible earthquake and tsunamis of March 11 were well represented in this year’s list, like keikaku teiden (“scheduled blackout”) for the period of rolling blackouts in the month after the disaster; “after 4,” referring the new free time employees enjoyed when their companies went switched to earlier schedules to save power (including J-List); the verb “Edaru,” named after hardworking Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, meaning to work really hard; and Operation Tomodachi, the U.S. military rescue mission, which had many Japanese laughing at its goofy name before making them tear up with emotion.
One of the more awesome moments in U.S.-Japan relations.
