Guide · Akihabara

Part of: Can You Learn Japanese from Anime?

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Which Japanese Words Do You Already Know from Anime? 100 Words Sorted by Whether You Can Say Them in Japan, by a Teacher Who's Watched 1,500+ Series

You already know more Japanese than you think. Most anime fans who book a lesson with me arrive with around 100 words they never studied. About 40 of those need care off the screen, including a dozen that are plainly rude. I have taught 2,112 lessons to anime fans and I guide tours in Akihabara, so I hear these words used well and badly every week.

Which Japanese words do anime fans already know without studying?

Greetings, food words, emotional exclamations, family terms and insults. Anime repeats the same short lines thousands of times, so words like sumimasen, arigatou, oishii, kawaii, senpai and baka go into your head without effort. What anime does not give you is the sense of when each word is appropriate.

Almost every student who books a trial lesson with me because of anime arrives with the same core. They can greet, thank, apologise, say something is cute or delicious, and shout a handful of things a villain would shout. Nobody taught them any of it. The Japan Foundation's worldwide survey of learners lists interest in anime, manga and J-pop as the top purpose for studying Japanese (61.3% of learners in the 2024 survey): the words arrive before any study does.

The problem is not the words. Anime shows you friends, rivals and enemies talking to each other, and almost never a polite stranger buying a train ticket, so your 100 words are weighted toward the wrong situations. The table below fixes the weighting.

I watch this exact gap on my Akihabara anime tour — guests arrive able to greet and compliment a shop display, then freeze the moment they need to ask where the register is.

Which of those words can you actually say in Japan?

60 of the 100 are safe anywhere, 28 need care because they are casual, intimate or carry a different meaning in real life, and 12 should stay on the screen. Sort by verdict, not by how often you have heard the word. Frequency in anime says nothing about politeness in a shop.

Safe = anyone, including staff and strangers. Careful = fine with friends or in the right setting, wrong with strangers or in the meaning anime taught you. Never = an insult or fight word in real life.

The Careful group is not a list of bad words; most of it is normal Japanese for friends, family or people below you, exactly the relationships anime showed you. The Never group is short because Japanese has few swear words; rudeness is mostly tone and the wrong pronoun, which is why omae sits next to kuso.

What are the eight words that cover about half of what you need on the street?

Sumimasen, arigatou gozaimasu, onegaishimasu, hai, daijoubu desu, kore, ikura desu ka and wakarimasen. In my experience guiding visitors, those eight carry roughly half of every interaction a tourist has in a shop, a café or a station, and all eight are already in an anime fan's head.

How they work together:

• sumimasen opens everything: calling a waiter, squeezing past, apologising, even thanking. JNTO's manners guide notes it covers "sorry", "excuse me" and "thank you" depending on context.
• kore + onegaishimasu is a complete order. Point at the menu or the figure in the case, say kore onegaishimasu, done.
• ikura desu ka gets you a price; hai and daijoubu desu accept or decline whatever comes next (a bag, a receipt, a point card).
• arigatou gozaimasu closes it. wakarimasen is the honest escape hatch when the reply is too fast.

Say only these eight, politely, and you will have a smoother week than the visitor who knows 300 words from Naruto and none of these.

Which anime words mean something different in real life?

Senpai is a relationship inside one organisation, not a way to address a stranger. Baka is an insult, not banter. Urusai means "you are noisy", said with contempt. Yabai is slang that flips between awful and brilliant. Sugoi is fine, but on its own it sounds like a child; adults add desu ne.

This is where I see fans get hurt.

Senpai. In anime it reads as a title, sometimes a flirtation. In Japan it only exists between people in the same school, club or company, used about the person or attached to their name, never as "hey, senpai" to a stranger. Calling a shop clerk senpai is not cute, just confusing.

Baka. Tsundere characters say it fondly, so fans assume it is soft. It is not. Between real people it is an insult unless you are very close, and even then tone does all the work.

Urusai. Subtitles translate it as "shut up", which is right, but fans hear it so often they file it as mild. It is snapping at someone. Skip it.

Yabai. Useful and dangerous, because it means "this is bad" and "this is incredible" depending on age, tone and face. I tell students to wait until a Japanese friend uses it to them first.

Sugoi. Safe, but overused. Every visitor says sugoi at everything until it sounds like a reflex. Sugoi desu ne with a nod is the adult version.

The rule behind all five: anime taught you the word from inside a relationship. On the street you are outside every relationship, so default to the polite form and let the other person relax first. More on that trap in can you learn Japanese from anime?.

How do you turn 100 words you recognise into 100 words you can use?

Say them out loud to a native speaker who will stop you when the register is wrong. Recognition is passive and anime gives you plenty of it. Use is active, and anime gives you none. The gap closes fast with output and correction, and it does not close at all with more episodes.

This is how my lessons run: 10 minutes of catch-up chat, 20 minutes of conversation practice, 20 minutes of translating English lines into Japanese using a series the student loves, and 10 minutes of review. In the translation block the student already knows the scene and the emotion, and I supply the version a real person would say. That is where baka gets replaced with silence, senpai gets a name attached, and sugoi gets a desu ne added.

You can do a cheaper version alone: pick ten Safe words from the table, use each once in a real shop or café on your first day, and notice how the staff reply. The reply is the correction. A week of that moves more words from recognise to use than a season of anime.

Where will you hear these words in Akihabara?

Everywhere, in the polite half of the table. Shop staff greet you with irasshaimase, ask fukuro wa ikaga desu ka (do you want a bag) and close with arigatou gozaimashita. Maid cafés use exaggerated kawaii register on purpose. Restaurants expect sumimasen to call staff and gochisousama deshita on the way out.

Akihabara is a good place to listen for this list because the words come in short, predictable bursts. Where to stand:

• Figure and hobby shops. Staff say irasshaimase, then leave you alone. At the counter, kore onegaishimasu is the whole transaction. Do not photograph the shelves; the rules are in Akihabara shop etiquette, and where to buy is in where to buy anime figures in Akihabara. For everyday manners beyond this, see Japanese etiquette.
• Lunch counters. Ticket machines remove most of the talking, but sumimasen still gets you water and oishii still makes a cook happy. Go Go Curry is a good first test.

On my Akihabara anime tour I point these exchanges out as they happen. Hearing arigatou gozaimashita at the door of a shop where you just bought a figure is when the word sticks. The tour is 3 to 4 hours. The per-person price for your party size is on the tour page, and rated 4.96★ across 171 reviews on Airbnb.

FAQ

About the author. I am Yuuki, a native Japanese teacher and Akihabara anime tour guide based in Tokyo. I am an italki Top 1% teacher with a 5.0★ rating across 358 reviews, 2,112 lessons taught to 443 students, and I have watched over 1,500 anime series, which is how most of my students and guests find me. Bring your favourite series to a trial lesson and we will start sorting your words on day one.

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Sources

https://www.jpf.go.jp/e/project/japanese/survey/result/information/dl/overview_of_survey_results_en.pdfwww.jpf.go.jpJapanese Manners Do’s and Don’ts | Guide | Travel Japan - Japan National Tourism Organization (Official Site)Travel Japan