Yabai
Meaning: hot, cute, oh crap, oh oh, delicious, feels good, and so on…
Who: Young generation, mostly until late 30s
Setting: With your friends in your generation, family. Do not use in formal situations. You will not be thought of highly if you use this word in formal situations. You don’t wanna be a stupid, right?
Okay, most of you who never heard of this word, “yabai” before might say “there’s nothing in common in the meanings!” Okay, yes. This is real flexible slang that you can use often times, meaning NOTHING and EVERYTHING. You can replace almost every word into “yabai” when the situation is over your expectation.
You can also use this as “very” ,“ excessive” and so on to make what comes after exaggerate. Events, actions or things that are excessive in almost any way can be described as “yabai”
so and excessively hot or cute girl is “yabai“ (ano ko yabai!! = that girl is hot! Or cute!)
a homework that is excessively close to the due date is “yabai“ (this is an situation example)
a dinner plate that is excessively delicious is “yabai”(yabai oshiii.= this so yummy!)
a wind after the work out makes you feel good is yabai (kaze ga choo yabai = wind’s feeling good!)
etc..
Again, this word should not be used in formal situations, as it is part of a Japanese slang called wakamono kotoba (young peson words). So if you use “yabai” to your boss, that situation would be there,”yabai” again.
After my research, I’ve found out this word actually has a long history since back in Edo era, started from 1603. According to Wikipedia,
There was a place called Yaba in old Tokyo, Edo in Edo era. “ya” means arrows and “ba” means place. So that place was basically for shooting play room with using arrows and target, for the public justification. However, the place actually aimed for, prostitution. So, name of this place “yaba” had hidden meaning, a dangerous place, and it ended up became adjective to express the dangerous situation, “yabai”. (translated by Me)
After 400 years of word evolution, people added the positive meaning in it and still using this word. Isn’t it yabai (awesome)?
Did this Yaba have anything to do with Yoshiwara?
返信削除http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshiwara
I have too little information about Yaba, however, I know Yoshiwara was officially approval-ed by Edo bakuhu(Edo government)and it was a huge place. I think yaba was more hidden and had to be a shooting play place although they were doing the same thing after all.
返信削除When I was in college in Japan, I remember I visited the place it used to be Yoshiwara during the sexuality class, and as Japanese culture, bad things have to be hidden, there was wall all over the place so I couldn't see the inside.