Japanese Slang: More Uniqlo Slang

You may recall when we explored yunibare, the word for when it slips out that you have been buying your clothes at the dasaiest of dasai clothing outlets. Here's another few words in that are related: ユニクローゼ (yunikurōze), ユニクラー(yunikurā) and ユニ隠し (yunikakushi).

Yunikurōze is a word for ladies that like shopping at Uniqlo (in Japanese unikuro). It's derived from the words Uniqlo (duh) and シロガネーゼ (shiroganēze, ladies that shop a lot in Tokyo), a slang word in its own right made from 白銀 (shirogane, silver and an area's name in Tokyo where these ladies live) and the Japanese pronunciation of Milanese: ミラネーゼ, (milanēze). Okay, so it's more like unikurōze isn't made from shiroganēze so much as imitating shiroganēze's imitation of an Italian word.

Yunikurā refers to the same thing as yunikurōze, but men can be in this category too. They took the yuniku from Uniqlo and added ラー, with is imitation of the English "er" that we put on words to make them into people (like work+er=worker etc). I'm lot aware if it is intentional or noticed by Japanese people, but it does sound like "yuni-cooler" to me.

Finally, yunikakushi means to try to cover up that you are wearing clothes from Uniqlo (read on a budget, read uncool). It is made from uniqlo and 隠し (kakushi, hide). If you don't ユニ隠し well enough, you will be ユニバレed. Or something. But Uniqlo is making efforts to seem really cool. "Like, I got this sweet music, guys. Watch me dance in my green hoody. Only 25 bucks! That's so cheap it's awesome. Hey, would you like a calendar? It's pretty cool..."


This is the weather for my town, but the pictures are from somewhere else. Actually, I kinda dig the music. Try clicking it on.
[J source]