Japanese Slang (25 page)

•   
Sorya ore h
kaburi daked
! D
shiro'tts
n da yo? Jisatsu shiro'tts
n no ka yo?
So my dick's fucked up! What d'you want me to do? Kill myself?

The bar's male population will often use animalistic words. The largest organs are the
uma
(horse) and the even larger
umaname
(horse lick). These are so sizable that when their owners squat at the public bath, the organs bounce onto the wooden platform in what is admiringly called
itaname
(board licking). Also well-proportioned are the
uwabami
(boa constrictor) and the
aodaish
(Elaphe climacophora),
an attractive blue-green snake, and the
orochi,
the mythical monster serpent that never failed to startle ancient heros and heroines. On a smaller scale we find the modest
unagi
(eel), also playfully known as the
miminashiunagi
(earless eel). If a penis is run-of-the-mill the bar crowd will call it a turtle (
kame
) or a goose (
gan
and
kari
). If just the shaft is under discussion, then the more specific
gankubi
and
karikubi,
the words for “goose neck” are used.
Yamagata H
gen Jiten
(Yamagata Dialect Dictionary), a penetrating linguistic survey published by the Yamagata Dialect Research Association in 1970, holds that in northeastern Japan, in Yamagata,
kari
is used exclusively to specify the lower band of the penile head where the glans is at its widest.

•   
Anta no gankubi iren'no? Tetsudate ageru wa?
Can't you get your shaft in? You want me to help you?

When an erection is brought up, the goose words are transformed into
gandaka
and
karidaka
(goose high). If the man is fully clothed his friends will laugh, and some will refer to his organ as a
tento mushi
(tent bug), while others will ask tongue in cheek,
Oi, tento o hatteru?
“Yo, you're setting up your tent?”

Some rough bars encourage penile games. After the excited customer has bought the hostess a drink or two, she fumbles for what she girlishly calls his
pinpinchan
(little Mr. Boing Boing), his erect penis, and does
hakebune
(sailboat). She sits on his lap, squeezes him between her thighs, and rocks back and forth to the cheers and whistles of the crowd. In some of the toughest establishments this bar-stool practice is advertised as
dakko
(dolly), while others go for the more blatant
umanori
(horse riding). Some establishments go even further. They offer
otete supesharu
(handy-pandy special) in which bar women publicly massage customers to orgasm, and
sukinrippu
(skin lip), the post-AIDS-scare attraction in which a penis is double-condomed and then fellated.

These bars are a treasure trove of words for penises. Guffawing men discuss each other's size and prowess, hostesses cackle at their clients' anatomy and purr strings of hushed epithets, the barman reminisces, and the third-generation Korean from Kawasaki city calls his organ
s
bakui,
a favorite term among Tokyo's ethnic Korean gangs. A transvestite recites a chain of fierce words that only gangsters use:
yoshiko, hode, teibo, reji, dekademo, fukubeb
, zun, zundoko, sade, b
d
.
Snippets of conversation float through the smoke-filled bar:

•   
Boku no s
bakui ga gingin tatchatta!
My dork got stiff as a ramrod!