Japan’s online culture has really taken off over the past decade, and it’s fun to dip into some of the 2ch BBS sites or random Twitter feeds and see what the Japanese are talking about. Although I’ve studied the language for many years, it’s quite a challenge to pick up what people are saying because of the thick net-speak everyone uses, from warped Japanese words like warosu (LOL) and it’s past tense warota (“I LOLed”) to gugure (“look it up on Google, fool!”) and so on. Japanese net users are notoriously lazy, and many slang words they use are expressed in the Roman alphabet to mak them easier to type, like “www” (which is short for warau, meaning to laugh, hence it corresponds to “hahaha”), GJ (“good job”), “ry” (an abbreviation for ryaku, itself meaning “abbreviation”), nau (the English word “now”), ktkr (short for kita kore roughly meaning “yes, it’s here, I’ve been waiting for this!”) and so on. Just as popular U.S.-based BBS 4chan has its /b/tards, 2ch has an elite group known as the VIPPERS, who love to think of even more strange net lingo. We especially love the boom in ASCII art-derived characters from Japan’s 2ch boards, and today we’ve posted some fun ASCII character keychains, stickers and other items.
The Japanese are the most creative people on the planet. Weird, but creative.
