8 Beautiful Japanese Words
There are some beautiful Japanese words that don’t quite exist in English. Japanese language would often describe those in-between moments — the moments that are hard to verbalize. One in my opinion is “Mottainai”. I am listing some more below for you to enjoy.
1. Shinrinyoku (森林浴）
- When you walk through a forest and you feel all of the natural light, green, freshness, and hear bird’s singing, that is the word for it. It describes that moment of soaking it all in and is translated as “forest bath.”
2. Ikigai (生きがい）
- It describes the reason for being, the reason for why you get up in the morning, and the reason you live. 'Iki' in Japanese means 'life,' and 'gai' describes value or worth. We all need a sense of purpose in life.
3. Itadakimasu (いただきます）
- It’s often said before every meal and it means “I humbly receive.” It captures appreciation for the work that went into preparing the meal. - check the blog -5 Japanese table manners.
4. Natsukashii (懐かしい）
- Nostalgic, reminiscent of good memories, missed, longed for, yearned after. In Japanese, to express a yearning for something, or a slightly nostalgic feeling of missing something, you modify the object that is missed (such as home, one's old neighborhood, one's friend, one's cat) with Natsukashii.
5. Wabi Sabi（侘寂）
- The view or thought of finding beauty in every aspect of imperfection in everything. It is about the aesthetic of things in existence, that are “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete”. A way of life that celebrates the perfectly imperfect – beauty found in the unusual, unfashionable places or objects, and in moments usually overlooked or unappreciated.”
6. Mono no Aware (物の哀れ)
- It essentially captures that beauty is subjective and that our senses to the world around us make it beautiful, especially that beauty is impermanent and makes us appreciate it more. The best examples are cherry blossom flowers that only last several days a year, limited time you can spend with your loved ones, or beauty and youth in one’s life. I don’t really like this word, it has sadness in it.
7. Furusato (ふるさと)
- Though it literally means ‘old village’, it describes one’s hometown. It’s not always about where you are from but often where your heart longs for.
8. Ganbaru (頑張る）
- The word ganbaru consists of two kanji characters 頑(gan) and 張 (ba). The first kanji 頑 means stubbornness or strength, and the second kanji 張 means sticking or stretching. If we were to translate this directly into English, we could say the two characters together means 'to stick with something stubbornly'. It is an ubiquitous Japanese word which roughly means to slog on tenaciously through tough times, and often translated "doing one's best", but in practice, it means doing MORE than one's best. The word emphasizes "working with perseverance" or "toughing it out".
I think I was expecting my son to do ‘ganbaru’ - do more than the best on everything all the time, and it had been probably too hard on him. He was diagnosed with Aspergers and highly functioning Autism last year at the age of 13. Now I just tell him to do his best. In my eyes, his best doesn’t seem to be trying 100% but it is ok. I see beauty in my imperfect and incomplete life now. Maybe when American say ‘ Life is beautiful’, it already means ‘wabi sabi’ - life is not perfect but beautiful.
