There are certain areas of the Japanese language that are actively fun to study, like puzzling out the counters, special words you use when counting different kinds of objects. Another area I liked learning was a class of highly descriptive adverbs that consists of a repeated word, which are have very rich and complex meanings. The phrase soro soro adds the idea that the time for something has come to a sentence, 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” a bolt of lightning makes, which is where Pikachu’s name comes from.) Some other random example 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).
Pika! is the sound of lightning and goro goro! is the sound of Thunder. Both are called kaminari incidentally.
