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Before we start, if you are new to Japanese numbers, please see our lesson on TheJapanesepage.com and then come back!
「いちごの国の向こう珊瑚 吐くな草に、さあ走ろう」
Do you know 語呂合わせ?
It’s a delightfully flexible way of using puns, sound-alikes, and playful readings of numbers (or other sounds) to create memorable words and phrases. Japanese is especially well-suited for this because many numbers have multiple possible readings, giving you endless combinations to play with.
Download, print, and read the PDF for this lesson. Listen to the sound file too!
Back in elementary school, we had our own version of this kind of number-play. We’d grab a friend and declare, “I one (won) your shoe,” then prompt them with, “Say: I two…” They’d answer, dutifully, “I two your shoe.” This continued until the poor soul reached eight—“I ate your shoe”—and chaos erupted.
It was even funnier when the kid who started the whole thing insisted the other person go first, not realizing that beginning on “two” meant he would eventually be the one eating the shoe. An argument usually followed about how the other kid “cheated.” Math was never Clay’s strong point.
In English, we can get mileage out of “1 → won” and “8 → ate,” but that’s about where the fun ends.
If only there were a language where you could do this sort of thing all day long…
If only, if only……..
Wait—there is! It’s called Japanese.
The other day, Yumi called me over and began rapidly scribbling a string of numbers on a piece of paper—maybe twenty digits in total. This is what she wrote:
3.14159265358979323846
Now, watching someone write numbers usually isn’t on my list of “Top 10 Ways to Spend an Afternoon,” but something caught my eye: the first digits were 3.14, which rang a familiar bell.
I flashed back to my own school days, when the math teacher talked about “pi” and my mind immediately wandered to pumpkin pie. (For the record, I’ve never been fond of apple pie despite being American.)
I don’t remember the rest of the lesson of that long ago day—pumpkin daydreaming will do that—but I do remember the teacher saying that 3.14 is π, and that remembering just those three digits was enough to survive math class.
But Yumi wasn’t content with three digits.
She went beyond pumpkin, beyond apple, beyond cherry—possibly even into pizza-pie territory—and kept going. And going.
How’d She Do It?
“How did you do that?” I asked.
She shrugged and said she’d spent about five minutes reviewing a 語呂合わせ that let her recite 20+ digits of pi without breaking a sweat.
That’s right—five minutes. Here’s what she used:
3.14159265358979323846
「いちごの国の向こう珊瑚 吐くな草に、さあ走ろう」
If you don't get it, just hang on. I'll explain. For now, look at the following:
Start with 3.14 and then...
15926535 → 「いちごの国の向こう珊瑚」
いち(1) ご(5) の(glue to make the sentence make sense) 国(92) の向 (6) こう(5) 珊瑚(35)→ 3.1415926535
8979323846 → 「吐くな草に、さあ走ろう」
吐く(89) な(7) 草(93) に(2) さあ(3) 走ろう(846)→ 8979323846
You’ll notice there are some liberties. は is enough for “8” (instead of the full はち) and さん (3) becomes さあ (well, now)
Translation
“Beyond the Strawberry Kingdom lies coral. Don’t vomit—onto the grass now, let’s run.”
Like most 語呂合わせ mnemonics, the meaning is purposely surreal—the goal is sound, not logic. But the imagery sticks, and if you can remember Pi starts with "3.14" and then the Japanese sentence, you can write out:
3.14159265358979323846…with no effort at all.
Vocabulary
- いちごの国 strawberry kingdom [1,5,9,2]
- 向こう beyond; the other side [6,5]
- 珊瑚 coral [3,5]
- 吐く to spit; to vomit [8,9]
- な don’t (negation) [7]
- 草 grass [9,3]
- に to [2]
- さあ now; come on; used to prompt action [3]
- 走ろう let’s run [8,4,6]
Put all that after the “3.14” and you get 3.14159265358979323846!
Do you see it?
This mnemonic, by the way, 語呂合わせ came from: https://juku.ameba.jp/study/a000001675/
And the non-edible “pi” is written in Japanese as 円周率.
Here are some common sounds used with 語呂合わせ:
| Number | Common Sounds / Words | Notes (English) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | い・ひ・ぴ・ワン・一（いち）・愛（あい） | “i” sounds are the default. English “one” is also common. “Ai/愛” works when emotion is needed. |
| 2 | に・ふ・じ・ツー・双（ふた） | に and ふ are most common. ふ/ふた come from old Japanese for “two.” English “two” appears in casual puns. |
| 3 | さん・さ・み・スリー・三（みつ） | さん and さ dominate. み comes from 三 (mi) and is flexible in mnemonics. |
| 4 | し・よ・よん・フォー | し is the strongest mapping. よ and よん used when avoiding “shi” (because of superstition). |
| 5 | ご・こ・いつ（いつつ）・ファイブ | ご is by far the most common. こ appears in many compound puns. |
| 6 | ろく・ろ・む・シックス | ろ／ろく are core. む comes from 無 (mu), a very common mnemonic substitute. |
| 7 | なな・な・しち・セブン | な／なな appear most in wordplay. しち less common because it sounds like “shi.” |
| 8 | はち・は・ば・や・エイト | は／はち dominate. や used because 八＝や. English “eight” works in modern mnemonics. |
| 9 | く・きゅう・ここの・ナイン | く and きゅう are the essentials. く often plays into “苦,” which is useful for puns. |
How can Japanese do this so easily?
A big reason is that Japanese has fewer distinct sounds than English, which means many numbers can match multiple possible readings. In normal conversation this isn’t a problem—context makes the meaning clear—but it’s also why things like 長音（long vowels） matter so much.
For example, the other day I asked Yumi about the 戊辰戦争（Boshin War）. She looked completely confused until I realized my mistake: I had pronounced 戊（ぼ） as ぼう, saying ぼうしんせんそう.
She blinked and asked what “hat war” I was talking about. (Because ぼうし = 帽子 = hat.)
Anyway—digression over. Let’s wrap up with a few fun examples.
語呂合わせ isn’t just for memorizing numbers; it’s also widely used online as a playful, “coded” style of writing. Here are some classics:
- 39 → サンキュー (thank you)
- 4649 → よろしく (please treat me favorably)
- 5963 → ご苦労さん (I appreciate your efforts)
- 315 → 最高 (the best!)
- 873 → 花見 (cherry-blossom viewing)
- and the scariest: 893 → ヤクザ (Yakuza!)
And there are plenty more where those came from!
See if you can come up with a Japanese sentence to remember a string of numbers!
Could you say 471 “Shi (ra) na i”? Or should there never be other mora included?
I’m not an expert on this and I’d like to ask a few Japanese friends (in addition to Yumi) but probably 6 is closest to ら. So Maybe 4671: 4 (し) + 6 (ら) + 7 (な) + 1 (い). I found this neat tool for converting Japanese text to 数字語呂合わせ (number wordplay): https://www.nin-fan.net/tool/goro/%E3%81%97%E3%82%89%E3%81%AA%E3%81%84/