Last time I wrote about an interesting feature of the Japanese language, a class of four-character kanji phrases that are used to add a touch of flavor to the language in much the same way we use Latin phrases in English ad nauseum. There’s another group of highly descriptive Japanese adverbs which are fun to learn because they’re so unlike anything we have in English, and Japanese people are always surprised when we know them. The phrase soro soro adds the idea that the time for something has come, for example soro soro ikimasho, “Let’s go [because it’s time we should be going].” A similar phrase is waza waza, meaning “to go to all the trouble,” as in waza waza arigato, “Thanks for going out of your way to do that for me.” If you have a sparkling new car, it’s pika pika (gleaming with newness), but if you don’t take care of it, it’ll be boro boro (old and rusty). (The pika sound does double duty as the sound of electricity, but Pokemon fans already knew that.) Some other random examples of these fun phrases include tama tama (by chance), bara bara (something that’s been scattered around, like a dismembered toy), and pera pera (the “sound” of someone speaking a foreign language fluently).
That awkward moment when you kill all the other characters by using your power in the water.
