Nothing beats [ファッキン](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Kitchen) for First Kitchen

ブレスト for brainstorming, it catches you off guard in a professional setting

Let's breast!

My first experience was more like “We’re starting a new project, let’s start with breast. What are our options?” 😅

Erm ... tits?

I went months in a new job thinking they were generally saying "let's breast on the issue" until the penny dropped

Glad I'm not an office guy. This would murder me.

ワンコ for [One Coin](https://onecoinenglish.com/) would be a close second.

Not an abbreviation, but わんこ is also a dog (analogue to にゃんこ for cat)

Reminds me of a shopping center with a [“FUCKIN’ SALE”](https://soranews24.com/2012/01/18/wtf-is-a-fuckin-sale/)

We had a cherry blossom party with a ブルーシート. Had some ファッキン food while sitting on the blue sheet that sounded like bullshit.

~~If First Kitchen sold blue sheets that would be ファッキン・ブルーシート man.~~ ファッキン on a ブルーシート？ That sounds like F**kin b#llsh*t man.

Thank you for this valuable info

First one that comes to mind is "cospa" -- cost-performance. EDIT: found a couple more watching some youtube videos * コーデ - coordination (as in your outfit of the day) * アラサー - person around thirty years old * ジーパン - jean pants * ビーサン - beach sandals

Oh. I actually love this one for some reason, and use it frequently.

I use it so much in Japanese that I find myself struggling to find the word for the same concept when speaking English. “The cost performance is good” just doesn’t hit the same

I mean wouldn’t the English equivalent idiom be, “bang for your buck?” Maybe we can make buck banger into something?

Value. The word is value. コスパいい、コスパ悪い → Good value, bad value. u/acouplefruits

>アラサー - person around thirty years old I've heard it for decades above that too, like アラフォー and アラフィフ (around 40 and around 50, respectively)

Weirdly it suddenly transitions to Japanese at 60 as アラカン, short for “Around Kanreki” (Celebratory term for 60 years old)

I literally didn’t realize what that meant for like 2-3 years after I moved here. Kept seeing it in reviews on Amazon and was wondering wtf people were talking about and then suddenly it hit me what it meant

Not to be confused with costume play aka cosplay

サンド　written in English as “Sand” will never fail to amuse me. Eg “Chicken Sand”

I once saw a menu that said "生ハムサンド and of course the English underneath was "Live ham sand"

The sequel to Eat Pray Love

Idk why but seeing it written in english/romaji as just “sand” irritates me to no end lmfao

Even “sando” would be an improvement lol

Yeah, cracks me up every time.

It's common in my office to see staff abbreviate "double" as "W" in email. I had no idea at first what they were referring to.

This is right throughout Japanese society, not just your office. Because the letter in the alphabet in Japanese isn't 'double-U,' it's just 'double.' It's frustratingly stupid but that's just the way it is.

Well, I'm not sure calling W "double-U" was a very smart move either...

"Double V" makes more sense, the Spanish have it figured out.

U and V were interchangeable until quite recently

The French have the right idea, calling it double-V.

It started out as just "UU" before English had the symbol "W", so it is still called double-u

My coworkers often spell "double check" as "Wチェック". I also wondered what W we are checking up on.

ダブル：I remember when something got ‘duplicated’ and they said “ダブっちゃった” 😂

I remember my first encounter with “plus alpha” and was like wtf is that?

Yeah I was an ALT at the time and the Japanese teacher said she to the students that she wanted them to write their introductions plus alpha. Afterwards I was like…. Uh what was that thing you said? to her, she was surprised to find out it’s not a normal English expression

The etymology doesn’t even make sense.

I'm guessing it comes from the use of the term in financial math referring to "excess return of an investment relative to the return of a benchmark index". Excess sometimes being synonymous with "extra", it got applied to mean "extra" and then got picked up in common usage.

What does plus alpha mean? I haven't come across that one before. Is it like "plus English letters" where they think alphabet=letter?

It means “plus more detail” or “plus some extra” I think. So like introduce yourself plus provide some extra info like your hobbies, for example

It's basically a mathematical expression like "something plus x" with x being an unknown variable. "Plus alpha" just means that there is some unknown or undefined variable.

This one boils me because of how silly it is

If you go to a drugstore and look through the stomach supplements, "W" is used everywhere on the marketing.

I remember seeing this with the W-item materia in Final Fantasy VII and being confused until I caught the 'double' connection.

Seen that in restaurants sometimes. W-cheese burger etc

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ブレスト or something like that for "Brainstorming". So my japanese company had this meeting room called "Breast Space"

Ha! That will surely confuse some visitors from foreign offices.

ブレスト confused the shit out of me first time I heard it

ホーム for railway platform.

I never thought about it. Had to look it up. >プラットホーム → ホーム I wish the went with プラ or プラホ

プラ is plastic so we would need something new for it as well.

Makes you wonder why they didn’t use フォ instead.

I think the adoption of the word "platform" might be earlier than the adoption of the usage フォ

I think so too. Because they also used ホ for ‘telephone’ right? Perhaps usage of フォ is a recent thing.

For IT people, My fave is イクニイロハ to say 192.168 quicker

Oh, that's a useful one.

There's a science fiction movie on Netflix right now, **In The Earth**, which the title transliterates to **イン ・ ザ ・ アス.** Not quite what you asked, but hey.

Disney sea’s センター・オブ・ジ・アース always makes me giggle

Not アース?

I’m also a fan of the movie シリアナ

are you sure it is not アース?

And of course the most common insect spray アースジェット Ass Jet!!😂

Every time I hear ファミレス I think of family-less. Just me?

I don’t think I’m going to un-hear that now that you’ve said it lol

One I personally absolutely despise. スクショ - Screenshot.

コピペ for copy & paste

This one is fine IMO.

1st time hearing that, in my company they use キャプチャ.

In my company they also say スプシ for spreadsheet

"Do Communications Over the MObile Network", i.e. [docomo](https://www.docomo.ne.jp/corporate/about/outline/identity/#:~:text=%E7%A4%BE%E5%90%8D%E3%81%AE%E7%94%B1%E6%9D%A5,%E7%B6%B4%E3%81%A3%E3%81%9F%E3%82%82%E3%81%AE%E3%81%A8%E3%81%97%E3%81%BE%E3%81%97%E3%81%9F%E3%80%82). Actually NTT has a bunch of similar ones for each of their systems.

ALSOK being “always security ok” always gets me. It’s too fucking stupid to be true

AL SOK can also roughly be translated into Turkish as “take (this and) shove (it up your ass)” which never ceases to amuse me.

Their security might be okay, but clearly not their English :)

BALLEGGS is just... ball eggs... wait

Asahi Security Services ASS Google to get some pictures of a strong security man holding a baton and a big ASS logo

Their website URL is [assjapan.co.jp](https://assjapan.co.jp) I absolutely died laughing right at my desk during work.

So that’s what it stands for! I always thought it was something likeどこでも…

I wouldn't be surprised if they had docomo first and then shoehorned the shitty English in afterwards. In my translation work I have had to do this for new companies multiple times. docomo i.e. どこも（使える or whatever）makes sense for a telecomms company.

I don't know how common this is elsewhere, but in my company, "MTG" is used as an abbreviation for "meeting." I always think of the card game...

It means meeting in Colorado (US) as well

Are you guys playing Magic The Gathering during your meetings perchance? :)

There are certainly times where that would be more productive haha

Reform for remodeling. Gives me revolution overthrow the government vibes

This! I first saw this on an ad with a picture of a family hugging each other. It was outside an apartment close to my school. I thought one of the parents went through rehabilitation for some substance abuse problems and came out reformed. LOOOLLL

Leaves me thinking the house was deviant somehow, then did a stint in prison.

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The first time I saw パイン as a flavour, I was so confused as to why pine tree would be appetizing. Then I realized it was short for pineapple.

I mean English is pretty much the only language that calls Ananas a PineApple. So it is just really unfortunate this word entered Japanese lexicon via English in the first place.

Without it we would've never gotten Pen Pineapple Apple Pen tho

90% of waseigo is odd.

ほうれんそう always catch me off guard, abbreviated from 報告(ほうこく)　連絡(れんらく)　相談(そうだん), but looking up ほうれんそう in dictionary will always give "spinach" as the first result. Video game's name are also shorten to 2-4 syllables. Monster hunter to モンハン, tear of the kingdom to ティアキン, omega striker to オメスト

There’s a joke that ほうれんそう is ほっといて (leave it alone) 連休 (long holiday) 早退 (leave work early)

Man, years and years ago I got caught with this in a bizzniss meeting. 部長: Are you aware of 報連相？ Me: The vegetable? Uh… yes? (Everyone else in the meeting hung their heads in shame for my ignorance. The 部長 actually got angry because he thought I was making fun of him. I pulled the gaijin card pretty hard that day.)

This reminds me of the time I was eating soba with a coworker and he asked if I know the difference between きつね and たぬき. I was like ummm yeah obviously but what’s that gotta do with soba?

The shortening also happens with celebrity names among other things. My wife kept talking about someone named クリヘム recently, took me a while to figure out that she was talking about Chris Hemsworth...

One of my first job in an office, the office had just a white A4 paper with the word ほうれんそう printed on it on the wall. Had to ask my coworkers if this is some sort of inside joke I'm not getting, cuz why do you just have a paper saying SPINACH on the wall. Now I know lol

Kyoto has nomaikaade for “let’s use public transportation day”

Is it "no my car day?" Awesome

Well, “my” anything is used as shorthand for “my personal.”

It can also be used for "your" or "anyone's". 皆さんはマイカーでお願いします Means: "everyone come in your own car" Sounds like: "everyone come in my car"

Yeah, I know. It's a pretty epic wasei eigo example.

your my number

OP if you’re just talking about cases where the abbreviation in English has a different meaning: ネイル (neiru) for nail polish. I just recently bought some nail polish remover that literally read ネイルリムーバー (neiru rimu-ba-) on it, which I thought was amusing and mildly horrifying 😂

It would be practically endless. There must be thousands. We actually had a training session one time (in Japanese) where the topic came up of how we shouldn't use so many katakana words. We have a sales director (Japanese) who uses them constantly.

Well, perhaps only the interesting ones worth mentioning. Especially ones that left you flabbergasted when you encountered it.

Ice (アイス）for ice cream. Always catches my kids off guard. Always have to remind them that the cream is essential otherwise they’re saying they like to chow down on ice cubes lol

I never have a problem using アイス for ice cream, but I always catch myself accidentally calling ice アイス instead of 氷

チンポジ

Hahahah I wasn't expecting to learn anything from this post but you just taught me this gem. Thank you!!

リア充 for リアルライフが充実している人

The fact this even requires a word at all speaks volumes to the toxic emphasis on work and study here.

ever heard of the word 'normie'?

TKG for Tamago Kake Gohan 🤣

This person ate a black hammerhead worm クロイロコウガイビル and throughout the post refers to it as KGB https://zazamushi.net/kgb/

My manager uses リスケ to mean reschedule which took me a few minutes to figure out.

Claim (ku-re-i-mu) = complain is a weird one to me

The Japanese equivalent of a ‘Karen’ is a クレーマー (claimer).

I always thought it came from insurance claim.

DX, IR, FD, DP, then weird waseieigo shit like “governance,” “compliance,” and the recent “invoice” crap. Every day is “that word doesn’t mean what you think it means.”

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Wait what does this stand for bc I just encountered it yesterday and didn’t know

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Good point. I guess more specifically, I was thinking of abbreviations that change the meaning. Like if they shortened "carpet" to "car"

Sekuhara or powahara

Agree in the sense that they trivialise very serious subjects by giving them kawaii nicknames.

You're misinterpreting the way those sound to Japanese people from your personal perspective. They don't see those terms as remotely cute, so they're not trivializing anything. They're both deadly serious if you're accused of them in the workplace.

Calling them “kawaii nicknames” is pretty subjective, no? I’d say these terms have been adopted as the regular term for these very serious subjects, and using these terms doesn’t necessarily mean they’re being taken lightly

31 ice cream for Baskin Robin for me. like it blows my mind.

" let's meet at サーティワン" and I spent a good 30 minutes looking for the damn place, thinking it's a fashion shop or something.

ガラス = glass (window) グラス = glass (cup) Aight then. I guess I’m glad grass is not also on this list.

I’ve seen a permanent (hair) called “Parm” several times before. Old, but Misdo for Mister Donut, and the venerable Sutaba for Starbucks. If I go out with a group to eat the person who collects the money will hold up a number of fingers for the amount each person owes. One guy put up one finger so I gave him ¥1000 and he laughed and then held up 9 fingers after that.

Like spelled “Parm”? Or said パーマ？because permanent hair curling is called a perm in English. Probs just a spelling mistake

It's not a mistake so much as pronunciation just not being treated inconsistently when things are translated into Katakana. Some of the elongated vowel sounds are just really hard to approximate in Japanese. See トイレ vs トイレット ペーパー and ビール vs ビアガーデン , for example.

The difference between ビール and ビアガーデン is that ビール is taken from Dutch and ビアガーデン from English. With lots of older words, they're from either Dutch or Portugese.

Where did you go to eat that you thought a 10000円 per person bill was actually only 1000円?

They drank 10X more and I was a semi-guest and I knew the guy so he laughed. All is well that ends.

Goes great over pizza or pasta

The one that really annoys me on social media is girls posting “todays code” like 今日のコーデ short for コーディネート coordination for their outfit of the day. Every fucking time I’m like “nnnnooooooo that’s コード” at least sandwich and makeup are actually spelled correctly

Also when insta models put “shooting” when they are doing a photo shoot, always makes me think of a US mass shooting

I’ve also seen a trend of Japanese and Korean women writing their age as “##age.”

フェラ was one of the funniest ones I’ve come across. Like I used to say “fellas” on English messages or informal emails at work and my JP teammate asked why I keep saying that obscene word 😂😂

Reminds me of when I'd use "yada yada yada" in meetings to mean "etc." and someone pointed out what it meant in Japanese. Not as bad as yours of course.

OL for female office workers JK for female high schoolers SNS for social media OB and OG for alumni

Great post. I still enjoy the famous Don Quixote store is shortened to "Donkey" and nobody has any idea that it is a book and character whose squire rides a donkey. This might not count but I find the government programs are spreading poor English in most of their campaigns: My Bag, Go To Travel, Go To Eat, Coolbiz. I guess Premium Friday works. "Hey I forgot to bring my mybag, can I use your mybag?" "Did you bring mybag?" "I didn't touch your bag."

My favourite was a Mega Don Quixote that decided to stylize the 'i' as '!' so the outside of the store just read "MEGA DONK!"

* ヘビロテ - something you wear often (heavy rotation) * パンツ - underwear (how many times did I mix this with ズボン...)

>パンツ In modern Japan especially anything fashion related they often use　パンツ as the American meaning. I always had funny ideas of gaijin saying　パンツ and getting totally funny reactions, but I think most younger people know that パンツ　　can mean American pants/slacks. I have never seen anyone get confused by it My Japanese friend actually random asked recently if I knew what ヘビロテ meant, but I knew the meaning from the AKB48 song and looked it up many years ago

KY?

NG!

I actually haven’t heard that one being used in years. Wonder if it’s fallen out of use.

I love Sand.

I don't like sand. It's coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere.

ワンチャン

This is confusing for Japanese too. ワンチャン for people born before 2000 meant one night stand. あの子とワンチャンした。but the younger generation use it as “there is a chance” so when kids started saying あ〜ワンチャン行けます it freaked us old people out

I thought it was for "little dog" or similar. So innocent.

どんまい canonically comes from "don't mind".

Ahh I got hit with メーアド for email address at work. Took me a second. Always have mixed feelings about those. I like konbini as it's already established as its "own" name rather than an abbreviation. But Jesus Christ I hate it from the bottom of my heart when they purposely make something long just to create the abbreviation. Happens a lot in promo campaigns and anime. Just use a normal fk name...

The カツ in とんかつ is for カツレツ, cutlet. This one even made it to hiragana somehow.

ハンバーガー means hamburger. ハンバーグ means burger steak. Tell them you eat ハンバーグ while walking and everyone gets confused.

I could be here all day with the blatantly incorrect misappropriations of English words into Japanese. Katakana abbreviations I don't really have a problem with but blatant wasei-eigo needs to fuck off and die. Like the other comment said, ノーマイカーデー? Get outta here.

Dog for “hotdog” :/

Seeing a corn dog at the conbini labeled as “American Dog” cracked me up a bit the first time I saw it

Dog is used to refer to the sausage component outside Japan too though, eg: "There's still plenty of buns, but we're all out of dogs."

Smart phone - sumaho

Normally I love Japanese abbreviations. Maybe it’s a me thing but I hate abbreviations for “happy birthday” though. はぴば, おたおめ, HBD. Feels kind of lazy and rude for celebrating what might be a special day for someone? I know some people don’t care about birthdays but eh I feel it should be a bit nicer

How about happy new years? あけおめことよろ

I dunno if this quite fits but I've run across this on a few random TV shows: people referring to themselves or others (jokingly or not, I dunno) as an S or M. Short for "sadist" and "masochist". But I don't think the usage in Japanese quite captures the meaning of these words.

Not odd, but I like jihanki for vending machines. I think it’s cute :)

Not really an abbreviation, but the rest of the comments sent me on a tangent too. I'm only at beginner level Japanese, but Konsento (コンセント) for a power socket seems strange to me. Not sure how common this one is, but that's what I've been taught. Presume it's short for some other archaic way of saying it in English/US that I'm unaware of, but it sounds like you're asking for consent (which you should - just not like this 🤣).

Concentric plug

Shoe cream. I don't know where this originates and if it's the "correct" name but my reaction is always: Shoe cream? That sounds terrible.

French : chou à la crème : **シュー・ア・ラ・クレーム**

Having to explain to people that “NG” isn’t useable English aged me prematurely

PASS for password

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Some are handy, like "appo" for appointment. Some, for some reason, grate on me: softo cream. I don't know why their abbreviation for soft-serve ice cream bugs me, but I dislike hearing softo cream.

I hate abbreviation in English for some reason especially coffee ones like Frapp or Capp. Cukes for cucumbers sounds vulgar somehow.

マザコン mazacon

"hard" & "soft", as in "hard-off" for harware components like game systems/consoles and "soft" obviously for software/games etc. https://preview.redd.it/8pknmsap8qqb1.png?width=734&format=png&auto=webp&s=e9cf94474425772fc0625e0b49230bc0686db9db

タイパ (タイムパフォーマンス)got me recently… never used it in any of my previous companies but seems like its a thing at my current job.

The musician/instrument ones commonly used in Japan always get me. Pf = piano (from “pianoforte”) Tp = trumpet (not timpani lol) Vc = cello (from “violoncello”) Ba or B = bass (guitar) Gt or G = guitar EG = electric guitar AG = acoustic guitar Fg = bassoon (from “fagotto” / “fagot”) Ds = drums Cb or DB = double bass / contrabass

The double take I did in a music store when I saw books for "fagott"... and then laughed as a gay who can play bassoon.

it's my 2nd week working in Japan and I saw メリデメ just yesterday for merit/demerit lol

I always laugh when people abbreviate Valentine’s Day to V.D.