Goukon - Survival Japanese for Bonggo

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(Partially dedicated for Bonggo :-) )

Whenever I hear this word, it always reminds me of Bonggo, and that’s why I write this (you can call this “Survival Japanese for Bonggo” if you wish).

Actually this word is among the earliest words that I knew after my arrival in Japan. The first time I heard this word was on my Japanese class (it was a great class to have a lecture on this word :-) ). Prof. Yoshizawa was trying to explain us about ‘。。。なきゃよかった’ phrase (it’s a phrase to express repentance - I will not explain it here, though). She was giving example about inviting her friends to a goukon and then regretting for her friends were so beautiful that the counterpart group gave more attention to them. Half way through her explanation she realized that most of us (her students) just came to Japan and thus did not know about this goukon she was talking about.

So, what is goukon? (合コンって何？). From small hint mentioned above, you should have been able to make at least a close guess. Goukon is an occasion where a group of boys and a group of girls (with same number of members) meet and have party together (this is not a dictionarial definition, I can’t find the word in my dictionary). The Japanese character of this word consists of gou (合 – kanji, means fit), and kon (コン – katakana, abbreviation of kompa (コンパ), which means party). Thus, it can be easily inferred that this goukon main objective is to find a ‘special someone’ that fit you (and here is where the word ‘Bonggo’ fits in :-) ).

Goukon can be said as one of the current Japan’s pop culture and I think most of Japanese today’s generation have experience with this goukon. Some of my lab friends have goukon sometimes (they never invite me to goukon, for they think that I still have girlfriend in Indonesia, and I still want to keep them think so). My friend from other lab even has friends that have goukon almost every week. There are also handbooks (that being sold in 100 yen shop) on how to have a smashing goukon (not so surprising since Japanese are known as one of the best to create manuals) – one edition for boys and one editions for girls, each mentions what are the things that need extra attention when having goukon with a particular types of boys or girls (our laboratory have one, and Yanagita told me to read it just in case I need it one day :-) ).

And even though this goukon is a well-known term, like any other terms, there are lots of different opinions about it. One of my friends hints me that goukon can end up into something that I better not mention here (for I don't want this sites of thing to be rated unsuitable for kids :-) ), while my other friend told me that the boldest step that you may ever do when you like someone in your goukon is asking his/her phone number.

For the closing of this “Survival Japanese for Bonggo”, here are sentences for asking to be invited in a goukon.

• Will you invite me to a goukon?
• 合コンに誘ってくれませんか。(Goukon ni sasotte kuremasen ka?) – Polite/textbook sentence (if there is ever a textbook explaining about goukon)
• 合コンに誘ってくれない。(Goukon ni sasotte kurenai?) – Normal conversational sentence (recommended one)

And again, for Bonggo: ganbatte (頑張って), he he he…