Japanese Slang (42 page)

•   
Om
mo ky
b
zu kai?
Are you also a priest today?

But in the big wholesale market, business is always brisk and the sellers barely have time to figure out whom to serve next. When crowds line up in front of a stall the market word is
jindachi
(men stand). When there are more clients than a vendor can handle he will yell,
jin ga shimateru
(men are strangling). When stalls are completely mobbed by haggling crowds the vendor and his assistants gasp:

•   
Tsukkomu!
We're being rammed!

Vendors are never too busy to find the right
besshari
word to describe a particular customer, and over the years market slang has amassed a rich stockpile of terms. The most creative, if unkind,
besshari
words are reserved for the women who come to the market.

Female customers who are master hagglers are called
hangaku
(half pricers) or
hikizuri
(draggers). Those with a knack for wrestling fish cheaply from a confused vendor during a rush are called
chochoji
and
omatsu
(those who wait). Gullible women who blindly buy whatever the vendor puts in front of them are the
bakabatsu.

Some of the cruelest
besshari
words playfully distinguish a customer's salient features.
tara
(large cod) is a hefty, somewhat alarming matron,
hattojiri
(startle bottom) is one with a startlingly large bottom, and
fukure
(swollen) is a jolly woman with fat, round cheeks.
Botamochi,
the tasty rice-cake dumpling covered in bean jam, refers to women with flat, dumpling-like faces.
Daburu bikkuri
(double shock) are women who, as they approach the stall, look so attractive that the vendor has a shock, but when they arrive at the counter the vendor has a second shock as the scales fall from his eyes.

The most typical early morning matrons, vendors say, are
yamabushi
(mountain priest) and
daibutsuzoku
(the colossal Buddha gang). The mountain priest is the housewife who has tried, with disastrous results, to save her elaborate hairstyle of the night before. The colossal Buddha gang are more practical: they run from stall to stall, with their hair still tightly wrapped in rollers, their heads reminiscent of the ringlets on the great statue of the Buddha at Nara.

8
Gambling Japanese

WHEN TOUGH Japanese gamblers meet in the smoky and illegal back rooms of their local betting parlors, they speak an elegant slang that becomes swifter and more labyrinthine as bundle after bundle of yen notes slam onto the table. Cards, dice, hand movements, tricks, stunts, dodges, and stratagems all have special names that often go back to medieval times, when gangs of heroic gamblers marauded their way up and down the countryside. These were glamorous men known as
bakuto,
and legend has it that they stole from the rich, gave to the poor, did knightly deeds, and spoke their own cryptic lingo that no one else could understand. They defended their honor and their right to gamble with swords that, in those days, only samurai were allowed to carry.

The
bakuto
of the nineties still work in groups—gangster groups—and call themselves
kage
(shadows),
kashimoto
(financiers),
buchishi
(bang masters) and
bakuchikoki
(betting tumblers). During the day they make an illegal living by quietly running roulettes, poker halls, high-tech slot machine parlors, and betting associations that deal in illegal wagers on sumo wrestling and baseball. At night, however, they
aim to bolster their income in private all-professional parlors known as
bon
(trays),
iremono
(receptacles), and more furtively
ageita
(trap doors).

The high-stake games that these tough men play are known as
oshikai
(push buying), and when pros play against pros the match is known as
aitsuki
(the inversion of
tsukiai,
“meeting”). In these heated encounters, the gamblers play traditional Japanese games. In
t
sen,
for instance, a vase or statue is set up as a target. Yen notes are leafed down onto a tray, the burly gangsters line up against the wall, and exquisite fans with beautiful classical nature motifs swish open. The men take a deep breath, and there is a colorful flurry as the fans hurtle through the air. The fan whose heel lands closest to the target wins.

A less athletic game is
hanafuda
(flower cards). Here the mobsters sit sedately around a large cushion and deal out a deck of forty-eight picture cards showing blossom branches, shrubs, flowers, trees, animals, and red ribbons of
tanzaku
—dainty traditional scrolls with poems.

The cards are divided into sets of four, one set for every month. The January set is called
matsu
(pine). On the first card, a crane looks up at the moon against a backdrop of pines. Then comes a poetry card with a subdued seasonal poem, followed by more pines, which, the gamblers explain, are ancient symbols of good fortune. The four February cards are called
ume
(plum), and show nightingales, plum blossoms, and more poetry. The March cards are called
sakura
(cherry blossoms): the cherry trees are in full bloom, and striped curtains hang from branches hiding blossom watchers.

The game is elegant. Its history stretches back to
the Heian period (794-1185 A.D.), when the refined ladies and gentlemen of the Imperial Court played
kach
awase
(matching flowers and birds). But with large fortunes at stake, the gamblers inevitably eye each other warily. A new pack is opened every session, for few can resist the tempting urge to do “chicken”
(chikin,
from
chiki-in,
a playful parlor inversion of
inchiki,
“trickery”). Card-fiddling methods are collectively called
goto,
which is short for
shigoto
(work). A habitual swindler, should he survive the wrath of his peers, is known as
gotoshi
(work master). When a pro smells perfidy in the air, he will quietly mutter to himself
zuku
or
zuiteru
(as in
kanzuiteru,
“I scent a plot”).

•   
Ki o tsukero yo! Aitsu ni zukareru to mazui ze!
Careful! If he catches on, we're in for it!

•   
Sono heya ni haitta totan, zuita yo.
The moment I walked into that room I smelt something fishy.
The untrusting player will glare at his opponent's hand, wondering if the flower cards have been
aori
(fanned) or
irotsuki
(stained).

•   
Mo aitsura to wa nido to yaru man ka, aori wa kori gori da ze!
I'm never playing with those guys again, there's nothing but cheating!

•   
Konna ni makeru nante hen da ze, irotsuki ni chigaine!
I mean, to keep on losing like that, the decks must have been stacked!

One typical trick is
dosa,
a word borrowed from
pickpocketing slang. A player with an exceptionally bad hand will flick a compromising card up his sleeve and quickly substitute a more favorable one.

Another classical trick is
okei.
The trickster befriends the
ch
ban
(middle number), a junior mobster who does all the odd jobs at the gambling parlor. The friendly
ch
ban
leaves oily hors d'ouevre plates strategically lying about so that the player can catch reflections of his partners' hands. In his 1986 book
Jisho ni Nai Kotoba,
Yoshizaki Junji claims that the word
okei
was invented in commemoration of Madame Okei, a malicious medieval heroine featured in the old theatrical hit
Kana Tehan Ch
shingura.

The
hanafuda
players gather around the pillow on the floor, and the round, or
bush
(from
sh
bu,
“match”) begins. The cards are smaller, stiffer, and much thicker than a Western deck. The shuffler holds the pack in one hand, and quickly pulls out small clutches of cards with the other from the bottom of the deck, slipping them on top.

In professional games, the shuffler is called
biki.
He shuffles
(mazeru)
and passes the cards to the cutter
(doni)
who cuts the deck and passes it to the dealer, the
oya
(daddy). The players pick up their cards and the game begins. The gambling slang words for playing a round are
bush
neru
(from
sh
bu,
“match” added to the verb-ending
neru
) and its shortened version,
buneru.
As the tension mounts, the hard cards slap onto the pillow. Every player tries to do
kanban
(poster), what Western card circles call bluffing. Those who are desperate even resort to
shamisen,
prattling loudly while the opponent tries to figure out his next move. Forlorn mobsters who have been dealt a singularly
bad hand might go so far as doing
bankiri
(evening cut). In a rage, they capsize the card pillow and lunge at a nearby opponent, shouting: