A Word English Doesn’t Have

Some wasei-eigo words have clear English equivalents with different meanings. マイブーム (mai būmu) is a different case entirely — it’s a Japanese-coined word that fills a gap English simply doesn’t have a single term for. In English, “my boom” means nothing. You’d never say it. But in Japanese, マイブーム is an immediately understood, widely used expression for “the thing I’m personally obsessed with right now.”

Ask someone “最近のマイブームは?” (What’s your current my-boom?) and you’ll get an enthusiastic answer: a new hobby, a food they can’t stop eating, a genre of music they’ve been exploring, a fitness routine. The word captures something specific — a personal trend, a private craze that might not be popular with anyone else but has completely captured your attention for the time being.

From One Essayist to the Entire Country

マイブーム is said to have been popularized by the essayist and illustrator Miura Jun (みうらじゅん) in the 1990s. He used the term to describe his rotating personal obsessions — niche interests he pursued with infectious enthusiasm regardless of whether anyone else cared. The word resonated so strongly that it was selected as one of Japan’s buzzwords of the year (新語・流行語大賞) in 1997.

What makes マイブーム distinctive is the “マイ” (my) prefix — it emphasizes that this is a personal phenomenon, not a mainstream trend. A ブーム (boom) in Japanese already means a trend or craze (another borrowed word), but adding マイ scales it down from society to the individual. It’s your own private boom. This “マイ” prefix appears across Japanese wasei-eigo — マイペース (my pace), マイカー (my car), マイホーム (my home) — always signaling something personal and individual.

How to Express It in English

Since English has no single-word equivalent, you’d need to describe it. Common options include “my current obsession,” “what I’m really into right now,” “my latest thing,” or simply “I’ve been on a ___ kick lately.” None of these have the compact, instantly recognizable quality of マイブーム, which is part of what makes the word so useful in Japanese.

The word also carries an important nuance that English descriptions sometimes miss: impermanence. A マイブーム is understood to be temporary. It’s not a lifelong passion or a core identity — it’s the thing you’re into right now, with the unspoken acknowledgment that next month it might be something else entirely. This built-in transience makes the word feel lighter and more playful than “obsession” or “passion” might sound in English.

Fun Fact

マイブーム appears regularly in Japanese self-introduction contexts — from school classrooms to company icebreakers to dating profiles. “マイブームは〇〇です” is considered a safe, approachable way to share something personal without being too revealing. It’s a conversation starter that invites follow-up questions, which may be part of why the word has remained popular for decades despite being coined as one person’s quirky expression.