And some people still think the anime and manga boom is a short-term fad. Fools.

Anime sparks Japanese word boom
April 5, 2004
By Sumiere Kunieda
Mainichi Shimbun

LOS ANGELES — New Japanese words are creeping in the vocabulary of American society. While many of them aren’t in English dictionaries yet, the Internet is flooded with them.

Type in “kawaii” (cute), “etchi” (indecent), “otaku” (fanatic), “bishojo” (beautiful young girl), or “onigiri” (rice ball), on Google’s search engine and you’ll come up with thousands of results for each.

Why have words such as these infiltrated the language? One reason, it seems, is the popularity of anime — Japanese animation characterized by colorful graphics and lively characters.

More in this link here.

Spread the word!