Hey friends, Hyeon here! 🙋♀️ Today’s lovely term is “koi no yokan”.
I love that the Japanese and the Germans seem to have a single word for every feeling like Schadenfreude or Hitomebore so I pay attention when a good word comes up. This time it’s not a word though, it’s a phrase.
Have you ever looked at someone and known you’d eventually fall in love? Like many things, I didn’t know there was a word or term for it. The Japanese do, they call it “koi no yokan”.
The term for the indescribable
Koi No Yokan (恋の予感) has no English equivalent but it roughly translates to “Premonition of love”. It’s meant to describe the feeling you get when you know you’ll fall in love with someone but haven’t. Before the butterflies in your stomach, before his gaze makes you melt and you picture your future together.
It’s not love at first sight
Koi no yokan is a different feeling from love at first sight. It’s not the moment your heart goes “doki doki” and the romance drama begins. Instead, it’s used to describe the feeling of a slow but unavoidable build up to loving someone.
Where does this term come from?
For this, I have no sure explanation for you but my favorite theory comes from the fact that Japanese marriages used to be arranged and there was no option for divorce. So with time, the Japanese literature began to focus on the tells of finding the right partner before you got to know each other.
What’s an example of koi no yokan?
Maybe you are having trouble understanding the meaning because my explanation is weak (sorry)? I’ll try and explain through a story.
I once agreed to take this guy on a hiking trip without knowing what he looked like or who he was. He seemed fun and friendly asking me about hiking recommendations around Seoul. More importantly, he sounded like he was interested for real unlike a lot of guys that pretend to care about your hobbies to get with you. When I met him for the first time, it wasn’t love at first sight. I was just nervous because he was a lot bigger in person than I imagined.
He was a considerate guy who was sure of everything he said but humble and curious about everything he didn’t. I didn’t have any intentions until we started hiking. It was obvious pretty fast he wasn’t part of this lifestyle. This man didn’t think it was weird to climb a 1200m mountain in just sneakers and jeans! But he did without complaining or begging for my water. 😂 He even had the energy to ask if this or that angle would be a good view for my Instagram and helping me get to difficult spots to take pictures.
But it was at the peak that I realized it. When we reached the top and he made a joke and froze at the view. When he stared at the landscape, his whole demeanor changed. I could see he was more than his jokes and his confident attitude. There was more behind his eyes and I knew that if I agreed to the dinner he promised after, I’d eventually fall for him. And I did…
Depth and complexity
Was that a fun concept for you to learn like it was to me? I hope so. I love concepts like these that make me appreciate the complexity of our emotions. There’s so much more to us than simple crushes, jealousy, hate and horniness but we don’t learn the nuances until we experience them ourselves. It’s nice to have someone else put into words what you can’t express.
What about you? How many times have you felt koi no yokan in your life? Let me know, share your stories!
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