Jenglish Dictionary

Our family has always crafted our own language, being here has inspired us with all kinds of new word combinations. Here are a few that might come up in later posts and are staples in our daily de-briefs.

JapAffirmation - a warm- fuzzy thought or feeling toward living in Japan.
Example: "I'm having a good Japan day today!"

J-Ball - stemming from the word 'odd-ball' and used to describe a moment in which wires of communication are completely crossed.
Example: My favorite are when I have proudly managed to put together a sentence in Japanese and in response I get a quizzical head tilt and a polite "nani?", which means "what?".

J-Rage - an extreme reaction to a particularly frustrating J-Ball incident.
Example: see the blog post entitled 'BEHOLD....'

JapOpposites- Newton's eastern equivalent to his law of opposites; for every Western stereotype of Japan there exists an equal and sometimes quite surprising opposite.
Example: see JapOpposites featured in blog posts to come.

"Gaijin Alert!" - calling attention to the presence of another westerner in the vicinity.
Example: At the grocery store Nova spots a white face in the crowd and alerts us with, "Gaijin Alert, Gaijin Alert! Mom, there's a white person here!" 1.5% of Japan's population are foreigners and that includes other Asians.

Gaijinators- our general term for a native English speaker.