だじゃれ - Dajyare

Dajyare. Japanese Jokes. Oyaji-gag. おやじギャグ。

That’s right. Japanese jokes. Japanese jokes are pretty interesting. There is a whole category of them that is entirely based on word play. Dajyare are made mainly words that have double meanings, and can be skillfully, and stealthily worked into a seemingly innocent sentence. The jokes don’t always involve two ‘words’ that can have double meanings, but occasionally the grammar in the middle of a sentence can sound like a word as well.

This is pretty hard to explain, so let’s learn by example.

Ah. Almost forgot. First, dajyare is 駄洒落。駄、 which pretty much means… um… it is the ‘da’ which is used in ‘dame’, which means, -bad-, more or less. 洒落、means ‘joke’. So, together dajyare is a type of bad, or failed joke. Sometimes they are also called oyajigyagu. Where oyaji is old man, and gyagu, is… gag. The proper response when you hear a bad joke in Japan is to say ’samui’ 寒い, which means cold.

Examples. This one is famous.

Japanese: monoreru mo noreru. モノレールも乗れる。
English: You can also ride the monorail.
Humor: Try saying them aloud. You say monoreru twice, the first monoreru is ‘monorail’, the second ‘mo’ is also, and ‘noreru’, is can ride.

If you can manage to work that into a regular sentence… you’ll be the talk of the town!

Here is my personal creation.

M: How do you say sidewalk in Japanese?
U: hodou (歩道)
M: naruhodo! (なるほど！)

Now that’s comedy. Wait until you hear my ‘bamboo’ joke.

-Harvey