Tonari no Kyaku — Japanese Tongue Twister

隣の客はよく柿食う客だ (Tonari no kyaku wa yoku kaki ku kyaku da)

隣の客はよく柿食う客だ (Tonari no kyaku wa yoku kaki ku kyaku da)

The customer next door is a customer who often eats persimmons

Why Is It Hard?

The repeated kyaku (customer) and kaki (persimmon) sounds sit right next to each other in rapid speech. The shift between the k, ky, and ku sounds while maintaining sentence flow makes this extremely difficult at speed. Japanese native speakers regularly stumble on this one.

History

This twister is one of the oldest documented Japanese hayakuchi kotoba. Persimmons (kaki) were a common autumn fruit in Edo-period Japan, and the image of a neighbour greedily eating them made the phrase both humorous and memorable. It remains a staple in Japanese language classes and speech therapy exercises.

Tips for Saying It

• Break it into two halves: tonari no kyaku wa / yoku kaki ku kyaku da.
• Practise the kyaku-kaki-ku sequence alone before the full sentence.
• Record yourself and listen back — mistakes are easy to miss in real time.

More Japanese Tongue Twisters

• Japanese Tongue Twisters — full collection
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Find hundreds more on alltonguetwisters.com.