90 Japanese Adjectives to Add Colour to Your Conversations

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If you’ve already learned the basics of Japanese, then you’re ready to use more colourful words by learning Japanese adjectives!

As a beginner, it can be frustrating to only be able to express yourself in basic “noun + は + noun + です” or “noun + を + verb” grammar format. Saying things like, “That is a dog” (それは犬です。) and “I study Japanese” (日本語を勉強します。). You want to be able to express a lot more! To be able to say things like “It’s a huge, cute, fluffy dog!” And how about describing things? To say something is “beautiful,” “tasty,” or “amazing.”

Once you start learning Japanese adjectives, you can suddenly express a much wider range of thoughts and feelings. It feels really satisfying!

You’ll need to learn a bit of Japanese grammar with these adjectives, but I’ve saved that for the end. For now, notice whether a word is an い-adjective or a な-adjective: these are the two main patterns learners use. The ending alone is not a perfect test; for example, きれい is a な-adjective even though it ends in い, so use the grammar notes below as you learn each word.

Also, here’s a quick study tip. Although I separated positive and negative feelings as adjective categories, it’s best to learn opposite adjectives as pairs. It’ll be easier to memorize and recall them if you learn them together. And if you forget one, you can use the negative form of the other to say the same thing! For example: “yummy” and “yucky.” If you forget the word for “yucky,” you can say the negative form of “yummy” for the same meaning: “not yummy.”

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Japanese Adjectives for Positive Feelings

There are many common adjectives for expressing positive feelings in Japanese, but these will give you a lot of mileage. One of the most common, すごい, can mean “amazing” or “wow!” and is often used on its own as a response. You may also hear the rougher, very casual すげー; it is often masculine-coded, so save it for informal contexts and listen to how people around you use it.

• Good: 良い (yoi)
• Amazing: すごい (sugoi)
• Cool: かっこいい (kakkoii)
• Correct: 正しい (tadashii)
• Simple: 簡単な (kantan na)
• Kind: 優しい (yasashii)
• Happy: 嬉しい (ureshii)
• Energetic: 元気な (genki na)
• Enjoyable: 楽しい (tanoshii)
• Wonderful: 素晴らしい (subarashii)

Another cultural note about these adjectives is that 素晴らしい is often used to say “lovely” or “beautiful” as well. It’s more common to use this adjective than 美しい (“beautiful,” which you’ll see down below) because 美しい is a bit heavier and poetic.

Japanese Adjectives for Negative Feelings

Here is the list of opposites to the words above. Words like ひどい and ダサい are quite strong and insulting when used to describe people. But ひどい is often used to describe a terrible, unlucky, or unfortunate situation, like how すごい is used to describe any good situation. Similarly, you can use 最低 (saitei) to say something or someone is “the lowest, the worst.”

• Bad: 悪い (warui)
• Horrible: ひどい (hidoi)
• Lame: ダサい (dasai)
• Wrong, Incorrect: 間違った (machigatta)
• Difficult: 難しい (muzukashii)
• Rude: 失礼な (shitsurei na)
• Sad: 悲しい (kanashii)
• Bothersome: めんどい (mendoi)
• Boring: つまらない (tsumaranai)
• Awful: 嫌な (iya na)

You’ll notice that 間違った means “wrong,” but it doesn’t end in い or な. That’s because it is the past form of the verb 間違う (machigau, “to be mistaken” or “to make a mistake”), used here before a noun as in 間違った答え (“a wrong answer”).

Japanese Adjectives for Size and Weight

Now let’s talk about describing what something looks like! For instance, if you wanted to say the “big, fluffy dog” as we talked about earlier, you would say 大きくてふわふわの犬 (ookikute fuwafuwa no inu). Now, descriptive words for describing things like texture, such as fluffy, are often used with Japanese onomatopoeia. ふわふわ is an example of onomatopoeia. That’s out of the scope of what we’re talking about here, but onomatopoeia is a perfect next step to learn!

• Big: 大きい (ookii)
• Small: 小さい (chiisai)
• Tall: 背が高い (se ga takai)
• Short: 背が低い (se ga hikui)
• Wide: 広い (hiroi)
• Narrow: 狭い (semai)
• Thick: 太い (futoi)
• Thin: 細い (hosoi)
• Heavy: 重い (omoi)
• Lightweight: 軽い (karui)

Be careful with 太い: it can describe something thick, but it can also sound blunt when applied to a person’s body. 背 refers to stature or height in this expression, so 背が高い and 背が低い are the natural ways to say that someone is tall or short.

Japanese Adjectives for Colour

Japanese colour words do not all behave alike. Some are い-adjectives, such as 赤い and 青い, while colour nouns such as ピンク and 緑 commonly take の before a noun: ピンクの花 (pinku no hana, “a pink flower”).

Some colour words also have related noun forms, such as 赤 (“red”) alongside 赤い. Treat these as vocabulary pairs rather than applying a blanket “drop い” rule to every colour.

• Red: 赤い (akai)
• Orange: オレンジ (orenji)
• Yellow: 黄色い (kiiroi)
• Green: 緑 (midori)
• Blue: 青い (aoi)
• Purple: 紫 (murasaki)
• Pink: ピンク (pinku)
• Black: 黒い (kuroi)
• White: 白い (shiroi)
• Grey: 灰色 (haiiro)
• Brown: 茶色 (chairo)

A couple of kanji notes that will help you remember “grey” and “brown.” The kanji 灰 means “ash.” And 茶 means “tea.” The second kanji in both, 色, means colour. So they read as “ash colour” and “tea colour.”

Japanese Adjectives for Distance and Speed

You can use these adjectives to express length, depth, distance, and speed. Note that 短い is not normally used to call someone short; use it for objects or hair instead: 髪が短いです。(kami ga mijikai desu, “My hair is short.”)

• Long: 長い (nagai)
• Short: 短い (mijikai)
• Far: 遠い (tooi)
• Near: 近い (chikai)
• Deep: 深い (fukai)
• Shallow: 浅い (asai)
• High: 高い (takai)
• Low: 低い (hikui)
• Fast: 速い (hayai)
• Slow: 遅い (osoi)

遅い can also mean “late,” as in to show up late to an appointment, or to describe the late hour (遅い時間 – osoi jikan).

Japanese Adjectives for Quantity and Intensifiers

These adjectives are extremely useful. They allow you to express quantity without specifying a number — which is very helpful if you forget your Japanese numbers or the counters that go with them!

• Many: 多い (ooi)
• Few, less: 少ない (sukunai)
• A little: 少し (sukoshi)
• A lot: たくさん (takusan)
• Enough: 十分な (juubun na)
• Lacking, not enough: 足りない (tarinai)

たくさん is best treated as a quantity word rather than a regular adjective. You can use it with の before a noun (たくさんの本, “many books”) or adverbially before a verb (たくさん食べる, “eat a lot”). Also note that 多い and 少ない are most natural in patterns such as 本が多い／少ない (“there are many/few books”), rather than directly before a countable noun.

Japanese Adjectives for Characteristics

You’ll use and hear these adjectives all the time, so make sure to memorise them. Two extremely common casual words not listed below are やばい (yabai) and うまい (umai); see our guide to Japanese slang words for more context. やばい can signal something alarming, overwhelming, or excellent depending on the situation. うまい can mean “skilful” and is also a casual way to say food is delicious.

• Delicious: おいしい (oishii)
• Bad-tasting: 不味い (mazui)
• Beautiful: 美しい (utsukushii)
• Ugly: 醜い (minikui)
• Expensive: 高い (takai)
• Cheap: 安い (yasui)
• Hot weather: 暑い (atsui)
• Cold weather: 寒い (samui)
• New: 新しい (atarashii)
• Old: 古い (furui)
• Fresh: 新鮮な (shinsen na)
• Rotten: 腐った (kusatta)
• Bright: 明るい (akarui)
• Dark: 暗い (kurai)
• Clean: 清潔な (seiketsu na)
• Dirty: 汚い (kitanai)
• Soft: 柔らかい (yawarakai)
• Hard (solid): 硬い (katai)
• Strong: 強い (tsuyoi)
• Weak: 弱い (yowai)
• Safe: 安全な (anzen na)
• Dangerous: 危ない (abunai)
• Wet: ぬれた (nureta)
• Dry: 乾いた (kawaita)
• Quiet: 静かな (shizuka na)
• Noisy: 騒々しい (souzoushii), うるさい (urusai)
• Busy: 忙しい (isogashii)
• Free (having spare time): 暇な (hima na)
• Cute: 可愛い (kawaii)
• Pretty: きれいな (kirei na)
• Scary: 怖い (kowai)
• Round: 丸い (marui)
• Sharp: 鋭い (surudoi)

暑い and 寒い describe the weather or the surrounding temperature; for a hot object, use 熱い (atsui), and for something cold to the touch, use 冷たい (tsumetai). 腐った, ぬれた, and 乾いた are past verb forms used descriptively, so they do not follow the regular い-adjective pattern.

You’ll notice that 高い is listed here again — it means both “expensive” and “tall/high.” And as for the adjective “noisy”… Well, 騒々しい means “loud” and “noisy,” but stating it as a fact. うるさい is used to describe something or someone who’s loud, annoying, obnoxious, picky, or fussy. So it has the connotation that whatever is “noisy” is also irritating.

How to Use Japanese Adjectives: A Quick Grammar Lesson

Now, let’s learn how to use these adjectives in sentences. The two main patterns are い-adjectives and な-adjectives (often called adjectival nouns). Unlike English, Japanese marks tense and negation on these patterns. If you already know basic Japanese verb conjugation, the logic will feel familiar.

い-adjectives in Japanese

い-adjectives go directly before a noun, or can end a sentence and change for tense and negation.

For example, to say “dirty socks”, put 汚い before 靴下 (“socks”): 汚い靴下.

But if you wanted to say “My socks are dirty,” you’d say 靴下が汚いです. Here, です makes the sentence polite; the adjective itself carries the tense and negative forms below.

For regular い-adjectives, make the past tense by dropping い and adding かった. So, 汚い becomes 汚かった (kitanakatta). For negative and past negative, drop the final い and add くない (present) or くなかった (past). Again, 汚い becomes 汚くない (kitanakunai) or 汚くなかった (kitanakunakatta). In formal situations, you can use ありません instead of ない: 汚くありません (kitanakuarimasen).

One common exception is いい／よい (“good”): its usual forms include よかった, よくない, and よくなかった. Learn those forms as a set.

Remember how I told you this comes in handy if you forget the opposite word? If you forget the word for “clean,” you can just say “It’s not dirty” or 汚くないです.

If you want to join two adjectives, you drop the い and add くて to the first adjective only. So, let’s use 汚い靴下 again. Maybe these dirty socks are also stinky (臭い, kusai). So, we would drop the い from 汚い and change it to 汚くて. Then add the second adjective and noun: 汚くて臭い靴下 (kitanakute kusai kutsushita).

な-adjectives in Japanese

な-adjectives take な directly before a noun. At the end of a sentence, the tense and negative are marked with the copula. Using 元気 as an example, an “energetic child” is 元気な子供 (genki na kodomo), while “The child is energetic” is 子供は元気です (kodomo wa genki desu).

To make this negative or past tense, you would conjugate the verb です like you normally would. でした (past), ではありません (present negative), ではありませんでした (past negative). In casual form, this would be だ (present), だった (past), じゃない (present negative), and じゃなかった (past negative).

To combine two な-adjectives, you only have to add で to connect them. So, if the child is energetic yet quiet, you could say 子供は元気で静かです (kodomo wa genki de shizuka desu).

Colour Your Sentences With Japanese Adjectives

Now you know all the basics of Japanese adjectives! Make sure to practice them with your Japanese language exchange partner so you get the hang of conjugating them fast.

And if you’re looking to learn more Japanese, JapanesePod101 is a great place to start. You can learn more vocab and grammar in context while listening on the go!

What other adjectives would you add to the list? Share them in the comments!