Speaking of glossaries, Pink Tentacle has posted an entertaining roundup of the 60 most popular words and phrases in Japan this year. It’s very nicely put together and expertly translated by my favorite Japan-culture blog.

When I studied Japanese in college, teachers and students alike loved to chat about things that were popular in Japan. Except nothing was just “popular.” It was either “very popular” or, in the most notable cases, “extremely popular,” because everybody was working under the assumption that Japanese people consumed new trends with uniform voracity. I became suspicious of this thesis when I traveled there and found that not everybody ate Pocky while watching reruns of Sailor Moon and purchasing teenagers’ used panties from hi-tech vending machines.

I had been lied to, but you have my personal guarantee that phrases like “You say?” are enormously, riotously popular in Japan.