Weird Words in JAV Titles (Part 1)

Since I reckon most of our readers are non-Japanese, I’m sure you’ve familiar with how long and bizarre JAV titles can be.

But first, why are JAV titles really long? The simplest answer is that JAV titles are supposed to be detailed plot summaries of the video’s content. This gives the potential customer a good idea of what they’re about to watch. Keywords are crucial to this, so a title is usually packed with specific scenarios, kinks, and roleplays that may entice anyone who's browsing the dozens of new JAV videos released daily.

This is markedly different from how, say, American porn, usually gives witty and sometimes hilarious titles to their videos. Western titles are usually conscious with branding, so a particular series would have a very specific shooting style, color grading, and approach to the scenes. This also exists in JAV, but to a lesser degree, and most of generic JAV you’d encounter would be almost identical to another from a different maker. Customers will then base their consumption from the actress and the kink they are interested in.

However, since most JAV titles are machine translated, a lot of titles become clunky in English, and some are even straight up confusing and hilarious. A lot can be lost in translation, which is why services such as ZENRA offer professional translation done by humans who actually have a command of the Japanese language. Watching JAV with proper subtitles honestly elevates the watching experience to new levels.

Let me put on my ‘linguist hat’ and together’s let’s make sense of some of the weird words you have probably encountered in JAV.

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Adult content aggregators manage massive databases with millions of videos. To save time and resouces, they do not hire human translators. Instead, they rely on unoptimized, bulk machine translation, usually through an open-source web caching proxy software called Squid.

If a software engineer forgets to lock down a variable or if the Machine Translation (MT) tool tries to aggressively translate every single word, it will literally translate the word into イカ (ika).

To add another layer of complication, most text isn't translated directly from Japanese to English. It might be scraped from a Chinese or Korean forum, translated to English, and then fed back into another language. This “pivot” usually results to more artifacts and, yes, more “squid.”

The word “squid” doesn’t just appear in JAV. You’ll most likely see them in Japanese instructional manuals that use machine translation. So you’ll most likely see sentences such as "Restart your giant squid" when browsing through the manual of the microwave oven you bought from Japan.

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Don’t be surprised. “Holy water” is a notorious machine translation artifact of the Japanese slang term 聖水 (seisui). "Seisui" literally translates to “holy water”, used in religious rituals. However, in sex slang, "seisui" refers to - you guessed it - golden showers.

This is not to say that there isn’t a religious aspect to the act. But because the context is usually discarded in auto translation, it may sound quite bizarre to a non-Japanese.

But think about it. Western euphemisms like “watersports” (like swimming?) and “golden showers” (a kind of flower) might also sound weird to the Japanese, don't they?

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The Japanese are very creative when it comes to their kinks. Turning a mouth into an actual pussy plays into the kink of turning any orifice into a sexual hole. The term “mouth-pussy” is simply a convenient way to this concept.

Terms related to mouth-pussy include “vacuum”, which is a slightly awkward term to describe a tight, well-executed blowjob.

"Mouth-pussy" titles are also slightly related to "irrumatio", which refers to deep throat. Personally, my favorite JAV usually mix "mouth-pussy", "vacuum", and "irrumatio." One of my favorites along these lines is IPTD-704 with Miyuki Yokoyama, the first in the "Vacuum Fellation for Semen Sucking" series. Miyuki-chan's cavernous the mouth and soul-sucking blowjob skills exemplifies the one of the best "mouth-pussy" experiences caught on cam.

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Coming from French, “esthetic” puts emphasis on male grooming, health, or physical relaxation. The “healing men’s esthetic” umbrella is very broad: it may include acne treatments, anti-aging care, or massage. Many of these are legitimate businesses that do not offer anything beyond an hour or two of being pampered.

However, in the JAV context, it usually means full body massages that includes blowjobs and full-blown sex “all the way.” Because a full a service by model-tier therapists that includes penetration is usually rare and very expensive, this has become quite a common fantasy in JAV.

There are loads of videos and series that touch on this kink, but I think S1 does this theme the best. Not only as they properly done and well-shot, but they feature some of the most beautiful actresses in the industry.

One of the most memorable ones I can recall is a vintage Saika Kawakita, SSNI-288. Here Saika does seven different services. But what strikes me the most is how diligent she was at pleasuring her customers. She looked very focused on the actors' pleasure: scrubbing their backs with her tongue, sucking off their toes, kissing them torridly, and smiling all throughout, acting like she is doing her dream job. I'm sure one night with Saika will shave off ten years off my age.

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Have you encountered other weird words in JAV titles? Share them with us in the comments!