Japanese Slang (34 page)

The case of
betcho
is even more bizarre. Throughout much of northeastern Japan, in such provinces as Yamagata, Miyagi, and Fukushima,
betcho, betch
, becho,
and
bech
serve as uncouth references to the female organ. In some areas of Fukushima, however,
betcho
refers to sex, while eight provinces away, in
Shimane, villagers use
bechi
to discuss virginal organs and
bench
for those more mature. The group of
betcho
words then completely disappears from the map until, hundreds of miles away, on Kyushu is-land,
betcho
resurfaces as an uncouth reference to a bowel movement.

•   
Aitsu k
en de betcho shiotcha nai t'ya.
He must be in the park taking a shit again.

•   
M
! Betcho shita ato wa chanto nagasan to ikan bai!
Man! If you're gonna take a shit, at least flush afterwards!

Another central Japanese word for the female organ that drastically changes meaning as it moves south is
heko.
Its furthest northern domain is Akita, where it appears both as
heko
and
hekko.
Going south, however,
heko
reappears in Chiba, near Tokyo, in Kagawa on Shikoku island, and in Kyushu as a male g-string, while in Hiroshima
hek
is an underskirt.

Japanese linguists are still baffled as to why
heko
became a favored provincial word for vagina, and over the years different linguistic camps have offered wildly differing etymological possibilities. In a forgotten 1847 study, published by the Edo period linguist Ono,
heko
is featured as a southern Kyushu word for “the pink meaty underbelly of a crab.” Almost a century later, in 1937, Yamaguchi in his book
Zoku Ikishima H
gensh
,
confirms that through-out the fisheries of Nagasaki,
heko
refers to the soft and edible part of a shell.

Among the most versatile regional slang words are
heppe
and
tanbe.
In the northern port of Hakodate both words are frequently used by local dockworkers and
sailors in discussing vaginas. Further south,
heppe
becomes a penis, then a testicle, then sexual intercourse, and then a vagina again.
Tanbe,
also pronounced
danbe
and
tanpe,
is even more flexible. In Yamagata slang
danbe
is a large and in some cases erect penis; in the coastal areas of Shimane some fishermen use it for anus, others for vagina, others again for penis, while street cliques in the seaside town of Masuda use it to taunt obese individuals.
Danbe
is at its most ductile in Niigata in central Japan. Locals there are very surprised to hear that their northern neighbors use it for vaginas.
Danbe,
they argue, is a hanging, swingy thing: a testicle, a penis, the pendulum of a grandfather clock, and in some farming villages even the dangly dewlap of a rooster—but never a vagina. Other Niigatans again, insist that
danbe
does not dangle but is a round, soft, and pulpy thing: a wad of cow dung, a jellyfish, a persimmon, or a testicle. Only a flabby and very small ball-like penis could possibly qualify as
danbe.
Then in Sado, on Niigata's seafront, in the bars and the pubs of the port,
danbe
takes on yet another form.
Danbe ni naru
(becoming
danbe
) means drinking oneself under the table.

After
omanko
and
omeko,
the two most prominent words nationwide for the female organ are
bebe
and
bobo.
In his controversial book
Nihongo wa Doko Kara Kita ka?
(Where Does Japanese Come From?), the popular Japanese linguist Kawasaki Shinchi argues that both these words are of ancient Egyptian provenance. Japan, his theory goes, was colonized by Egyptian adventurers. As a result, unbeknownst to modern street cliques, many of their favorite words for vagina are of Egyptian origin. In more modern times
bobo
and
bebe,
propelled by their pleasant alliterative
sound, have spread into provincial street speech throughout Japan.

Bobo
is of southern origin, a Kyushu island word, but it appears side by side with
bebe
in dialects all the way from Shikoku island to the opium plains of Tsugaru in the extreme northern part of Honshu. In many areas
bobo
is considered far crasser than
bebe.
While with-it Tokyoites might enjoy bandying
bobo
about in their club-scene speech, even the toughest of street gangs in Fukuoka and Nagasaki will use it with the greatest circumspection.

•   
Aitsu ni sakaya de ippai ogottara, bobo misete kureru'tte shittotta ya!
D'you know, if you buyher a lotta drinks at the bar, she'll show you her twat!

•   
Kono kuriimu o bobo ni nuttara ninshin sen kai na?
If I rub this cream into my cunt I won't get pregnant?

•   
Nan de kai na! Bobo ga ittsumo kaii chaga!
I don't know why! My cunt's always itchy!

Like the other prominent Japanese words for vagina,
bobo
appears around the countryside in different guises. In some villages in the mountains of Yamanashi it pops up as a male organ, but in all other areas
bobo
remains strictly feminine. Yamagata city slang, a renowned melting pot of northern and central Japanese dialects, uses both
bobo
and its local variant
hobo.
In the Niigata province
bebe
is used for vaginas, while
bobo-san
(Ms. Bobo) and
bobo-sama
(Lady Bobo), specify the clitoris. In the Kobe area
bobo
appears as a truncated
bo.
It is only on its home turf, on the island of Kyushu, that
bobo
has over the years absorbed the
many different local accents. Just on the streets of Kumamoto it surfaces as
b
bo, b
b
, bobojo,
and even
bocho.