No no that’s Bonsai, Banzai was a battle cry for the emperor, if you didn’t raise it you may very well end up being forced to commit Ikebana.
No, that’s a popular Japanese grill where they cook the food in front of you.
You’re thinking of Hare Krishna.
Or maybe Hairy Karaoke.
As long as you aren’t forced to sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” with Harry Caray.
That’s a good one! I’ve actually used a few of these variations as aliases. My favorite is “Amos Borodino”. It just has a great sound to it.
Yeah, it actually means 10,000 years and the entire saying cry was 天皇陛下万歳 Tennoheika banzai, which is along the lines of “long live the Emperor”. The first part, The Emperor, is said with less emphasis and flatter and I presume the charge itself starts with banzai.
There are a number of Japanese words that got completely mangled when adopted into English, including karaoke and harakiri.
I had to reset my brain to see why this is funny.
Whoa - I haven’t played Call of Duty since highschool, but seeing that written I could hear the World at War line in my head. They do say both words, and yeah the emphasis is on banzai.
Interesting meaning - there was a similarly translated cheer in the Vice episode on North Korea, people shouting ‘Live 10,000 years’ to the Supreme Leader.
It’s worth bearing in mind though that typically armies were more cohesive than the movie trope of a intermingled mass of friend and foe. If you can’t see a demarcation between “them” and “us” it’s generally time to run.