Every year dictionary publisher U-CAN announces the most popular buzzwords for the past year, slang which appears suddenly and is likely to fade away almost as quickly. One word that was on people’s lips in 2008 was arofo, an abbreviation of “around forty” made popular by a television drama by the same name, and the word has come to symbolize the current generation of Japanese women in their forties. This has also been a good year for Japanese comedian Harumi Edo, who makes use of the fact that words in Japanese end in full syllables, e.g. ra-nin-gu instead of “running,” and her popular comic routine that turns the final gu! sound into the English good! has won her a place on the list. Some words that were nominated for the award but not chosen include homuresu chugakusei (homeless Junior High School student) based on a book released by a media “talent” who spent some months living in a park as a boy, dokuiri gyoza (poison Chinese dumplings) due to the Chinese food scare, and asa banana (morning banana), reflecting the sudden popularity of a diet that promoted eating a banana for breakfast, which resulted in bananas being completely sold out and impossible to buy in supermarkets throughout the country.
