There’s a category of four-syllable (or four kana) words used here that are so loaded with meaning they boggle the mind, and I found they were quite fun to study and use. First is せっかくsekkaku (seh-KAH-koo), which carries the implication of having gone to great trouble to do something for someone only to have them not appreciate your efforts. Another fun word is やっぱり yappari (yah-PAH-ree), which means “just as I thought” or “as I expected” or “Aha! I knew you’d be trying to peek into the girl’s bath!” When you learn something that surprises you, you might use the phrase なるほど naruhodo, which can be translated as “wow, I didn’t know that” or “I see your point,” and in a TV drama, a police inspector might mutter this to themselves as a signal to viewers that he’d found another piece of a puzzle. Finally there’s とにかく tonikaku (toh-nee-kah-koo), which just means “at any rate” “regardless of that fact” or just “anyway.” When my bilingual son was growing up, he got confused and accidentally combined English and Japanese stems to create the hybrid word toni-way (tonikaku + anyway), which has been a running joke in our family ever since.
Here are some random Japanese phrases for you.
