Today we're going to talk about terms of endearment in Japanese.

Or pet names, AKA the things you call your significant other

other than their name.

So in English we have things like:

honey, darling, sweetheart, sweetie,

babe, bae, boo...

You can call your SO pretty much anything in English.

It doesn't even have to be a real word if you say it with the right intonation.

People can understand that you're using it as a term of endearment.

You can be like, "This is my snickerdoodle here" or something

and people would be like, "All right, that's just what they call each other."

"They call each other 'snickerdoodle'. Ok."

So what kind of things would you say here in Japan for a pet name?

I really can't think of anything right now.

Do we even really have any pet names? I don't think we do.

We know that you guys use "honey" or "darling".

We have katakana so we just spell it "hani-" or "da-rin".

But we don't really use it.

No one actually says "da-rin"?

"Ohayou, da-rin!"

Maaybe some people do.

But not really.

There kind of aren't really any Japanese terms of endearment.

I guess Japanese people don't tend to be very verbal with their affection.

Right, right. Exactly. Not really.

Not verbal.

So they do actually kind of have one term of endearment that you can use here,

which is the word "anata."

The word "anata" is the word for "you,"

which we're actually taught in Japanese 101 you're not supposed to use

because it's rude if you know someone else's name and you use the word "anata."

You see married wives call their husband "anata" sometimes.

It seems like a word that's more commonly used among married couples or-

Right.

-or slightly older couples.

Not like "old" old, but they've been married a while.

Right.

That's kind of the image I have of anata.

I read Death Note both in Japanese and in English,

and Yagami Light's mother, she called Soichiro "anata."

And in the English version it's translated as "darling."

Darling, yeah.

So that's kind of like the one word you can use here that's an actual word.

Other than that I feel like you would kind of have to make up your own pet name

or something like a nickname for someone, right?

Yeah, some people use -chan.

So like, Rachel-chan or Rei-chan.

-chan, I guess.

Rei-chan or something.

I think so.

Jun-chan.

Yeah, a lot of my friends call me Jun-chan.

If you're a little bit nerdier or I guess if you want to joke around, I guess you could say -tan.

Oh, that sounds really nerdy.

Yeah.

Rachel-tan.

Well I don't know any friends from Akihabara who actually use that.

I don't know but yeah, I guess so.

In the beginning of our relationship I didn't know any terms of endearment in Japanese

and so I would just make things up to call Jun.

So I would say things like "suteki na otto,"

which is more like a sentence.

Wait, that's what you were trying to do?

Which is saying my magnificent husband or something like that.

It was not a name. It was a sentence.

Yeah, it's more like a sentence.

Or I would say like...

Otto-san

Mr. husband

My Mr. Husband.

Okay.

Kinda like it.

You can just make stuff up. Whatever sounds good with you then I guess.

I guess so.

And I mean you know it's not like there's a wrong way to call someone in Japanese.

Just because they don't have terms of endearment really

doesn't mean you're not allowed to make up a term of endearment.

But if your partner is Japanese, I suggest you ask your partner if it sounds okay first at least, I think.

I don't want you to call me like magnificent husband in public.

That sounds weird.

Hello everyone, this is my magnificent husband.

I would never say that in public to other people.

Just make sure it sounds at least okay.

Or maybe private.

Privately.

See Jun's not comfortable with this stuff in public.

No, no, no. I'm fine. But it sounds weird.

What if I start calling you like sugar muffin in public?

I really don't know. Sugar muffin? That sounds sweet.

If we were with a group of friends, would you be embarrassed if I said like...

"Hey sweetie, can you come over here for a second?" or something?

I'm so used to this. I'm perfectly fine.

Jun started using terms of endearment here just recently.

He's using the word honey, but he doesn't really know how to use terms of endearment,

so he only uses it when he's really stressed out.

Like he wants me to come get the cat because he's trying to work.

So he'll say like,

Honey, can you come get the cat?

He's only using it in really bad situations.

So I guess it's just not really a cultural thing here

to use terms of endearment for your significant other.

We don't really feel the need to call your...

insignificant other?

like darling or-

No, "significant other" not "insignificant other."

That's horrible to say about someone.

This is my INsignificant other.

They're not important to me at all.

Some people actually even think this way.

If you say it too often, the meaning becomes a little lighter.

Well yeah. Do you know what I mean?

There are some people in America who feel that way, too.

But I don't understand that because

it's not like I have an MP bar for love,

and I can only cast LOVE every 30 days.

I can say I love you as many times as I want. I'm never going to run out of MP or anything.

It's not like going down every time I say love.

That's actually a very interesting and easy way to put this.

So it's like the strongest magic you can use in Japan.

It costs like 100 MP.

It doesn't cost anything!

Like here [with you] it only costs like 1MP right?

But here it costs 100MP.

It doesn't cost any MP at all.

It does. It also takes some courage, too.

I guess it's just not really a big cultural thing here,

terms of endearment or pet names.

Not really.

So yeah you can just make up your own name

and maybe it discuss it over and make sure you're not saying something SUPER weird or strange

even though maybe that'll be funny, too.

I still like saying "suteki na otto."

Ok.

I hope you guys learned something in this video!

Thanks for watching and we'll see you later! Bye!