Do Japanese people play with words like we do in English?

For example if someone tells us a secret and wouldn’t want us to spill the beans and we say:

Don’t worry. My seals are lipped.

This could work with any phrase of course but I was wondering if Japanese people do this.

6 comments
  1. There are long running Japanese tv shows that do nothing but wordplay. Because of kanji confusions and so many homophones these shows will run forever.

  2. Yes. Watch some movies on nicovideo and leave the comments on. Take a shot every time you see a wordplay and see how long it takes for you to die of alcohol poisoning.

  3. Not much. In J communication is generally painfully formulaic and predictable (depending on your age / gender you are expected to use on repeat set phrases, like “ee”, “sokka”, “sugoi”, “yabai”, “kawaii”, “uso”, “maji”, “taihen” etc etc).

  4. I find puns are generally frowned on. They are only seen as dad joke material オヤジギャグ

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