Japanese Slang (43 page)

•   
Damashi yagatta na! Ore wa kono me de hakkiri to mita ze!
He fucking cheated! I saw it with my own eyes!

When a game is lost, the unlucky players are pronounced
buchidao,
from
buchi
(hit) and
taoreta
(toppled). An even more jocular word for a lost game is
banzai
(hurrah). When screaming
banzai
at a baseball match or in a football stadium, one usually throws one's arms up in ecstasy. The losers of the
hanafuda
game also throw their arms up—but they do so in agony over all the cash they have lost. The money that ends up in the winner's tray is called
ochizeze,
a humorous dialect version of
ochi zeni
(dropped cash), and the cut that goes to the illegal parlor is the
terasen
(temple coin).

•   
Ky
no ochizeze wa nakanaka na man' da ze.
Man, today's winnings are pretty good.

•   
Temera terasen ireru no wasurenna'yo!
Yo! Don't forget to drop your temple donations in there!

If a match turns out to be a draw, the opponents declare it
bush
nashi
(from
sh
bunashi,
“no match”), and the colorful cards are dealt out again.

•   
Konkai wa bush
nashi k
. Mo ippen yar
ze!
So it's an even match. Lets go for another round!

The winner of the first round is
hatsu uke
(first receiver). The gambler who wins round after round is named
uketsubo
(receiving pot). The powerful gambling bosses,
rin
(large wheels), will often invite important business associates, even politicians, to the game and make ostentatious mistakes known as
kezuri
(deletions) and
kaimachi
(the inversion of
machigai,
“error”). This is a genial underworld way of obliging influential friends with large sums of money without actually bribing them.

Dice Throwers

Gamblers interested in a faster game with quick cash prizes play dice. They are a tougher, earthier mob, which is shunned by refined cliques. Gambling slang calls them
hoira, baicha, s
mi,
and
kyokamuzabucha,
all Korean words from Japan's ethnically diverse gangster scene. The jargon these men speak in their parlors is mottled with Korean slang words; amateurs are called
chinoniruta
and
chiroriruta,
and pro gamblers new at a certain dice game are called
ky
kan. Karikugi
or
hihicha
is “gambling,”
karichun
“swindling,” and guns are given Korean names like
tai
(sleep),
t
jitari
(pork chop), and
buchitani
(handgun).

•   
Ky
wa karikugi ni t
jitari wasurennayo.
Don't forget to take your gun along to today's match.