By translator and writer Jamie Graves (Saitama-Ken 2002-2003)
The Google Honyaku group has a great discussion going on trying to pin down exactly what physical sensation karai (辛い) refers to. The easiest English analogy is “spicy“, and it’s often used to refer to hot foods, but as I learned from a few years of working in restaurant kitchens in Japan, the word can also refer to anything that’s a little too salty, too strong (dark Belgian beer with a high alcohol content) , or strongly flavored (sun-dried tomatoes).
People even provide examples of native Japanese speakers (NJS’s) using karai to describe such disparate flavors as minty Colgate toothpaste or cola.
As Marc Adler ably sums it up, “Anything that is over-stimulative of the mouth gets labeled as ‘karai.’ I think we just don’t have a single word in English that covers all of karai’s lexical bases.”
Case in point, the word used to describe a dry wine is kara-kuchi (辛口), which isn’t by any stretch of the imagination “spicy”. Laurie Berman supplies an excellent and concise theory about this:
My impression is that [karai] 辛い and [amai, “sweet”] 甘い are regarded as opposites, and as a result, [amai] 甘い can be used to mean “not [karai] 辛い,” and [karai] 辛い can sometimes be used to mean “not [amai] 甘い”–which is how I interpret [karai] 辛口.
Does anyone else have an example of an unusual food that they heard a native Japanese speaker refer to as karai?
4 comments so far...
My first experience with Karai as something different from my preconceived notions of spiciness was when someone described Listerine mouthwash as “karai.” It was an interesting introduction to the breadth of the word’s usage.
Perhaps “sharp” would be an appropriate English term? I suppose we don’t really have a term for what Listerine feels like in your mouth, but if I had to choose one word, “sharp” might be that word.
Of course, that would raise the question of how to best translate “sharp cheddar cheese”.
This isn’t exactly food related, but my wife tells me that sometimes people can be referred to as being “karai,” referring to their manner of speech. People who are direct and sharp with their words can be called “karai,” in much the same way someone can be referred to as “tsumetai” when they are cold or distant.
I never really thought of this. It just kind of seeped its way into my lexicon, In fact, my wife just bought some Listerine and we were discussing its “karasa”.
As for sharp cheddar cheese, that’e easy: シャープ・チェダー・チーズ :P
I used to think katakana was “cheating”, but sometimes it is the easiest way to handle things.