だるい
だるい
darui
= heavy-feeling / sluggish / lethargic / can’t be bothered
だるい (darui) describes that heavy, can’t-move, don’t-want-to-do-anything feeling — the physical and mental sluggishness of a Monday morning, a post-lunch slump, or a summer afternoon too hot to function. It’s one of the most universally relatable words in Japanese.
Darui originally described physical heaviness in limbs — the aching fatigue you feel when sick or exhausted. In modern casual usage it has expanded to mean ‘can’t be bothered,’ ‘this is a drag,’ or ‘I have no motivation.’ It describes both physical (だるくて起きられない — darukute okirare nai — too sluggish to get up) and psychological states (会議がだるい — kaigi ga darui — this meeting is a drag). Related: だるさ (darusa — the feeling/quality of being darui), だるだる (darudaru — completely listless, reduplication for emphasis).
Darui sits between 疲れた (tsukareta — tired/exhausted, more physical) and めんどくさい (mendokusai — bothersome/troublesome, more cognitive). Darui is the slumped-in-your-chair feeling; tsukareta is the ‘I ran a marathon’ feeling; mendokusai is the ‘I don’t want to deal with this task’ feeling. All three are common complaint words but carry different nuances.
だるい is written in hiragana. The standard kanji form 怠い is rarely used in modern writing. The word derives from 弛る (yurumu — to slacken/loosen), reflecting the physical sensation of muscles going slack.
Everyday use
今日は朝からずっとだるくて、何もやる気が出ない。
Kyou wa asa kara zutto darukute, nani mo yaruki ga denai.
I’ve felt sluggish since this morning and can’t find motivation for anything.
Casual / Social Media
月曜日だるすぎる。なんで週5で働かないといけないんだ
Getsuyoubi darususgiru. Nande shuu-go de hatarakanai to ikenainda
Monday is too much of a drag. Why do we have to work five days a week
Formal / Cultural context
長時間労働後の持続的な倦怠感は、単なる疲労ではなく、職場環境や業務負荷に起因するバーンアウト症候群の初期症状として捉える必要がある。
Choujikan roudou-go no jizokuteki na kentaikan wa, tan naru hirou dewa naku, shokuba kankyou ya gyoumu fuka ni kiin suru baannauto shoukougun no shoki shoujou toshite toraeru hitsuyou ga aru.
Persistent lethargy after long working hours should be understood not as mere fatigue but as an early symptom of burnout syndrome caused by workplace conditions and workload.
だるい is closely tied to Japanese attitudes toward overwork and the cultural expectation of persistent effort. In a society where working long hours and pushing through fatigue is often normalized — captured in concepts like 過労死 (karoushi — death from overwork) — admitting you feel darui can carry a faint connotation of weakness or laziness, though younger generations are increasingly open about it as a form of honest self-expression and pushback against hustle culture.
On Japanese social media, だるい appears heavily on Sunday nights and Monday mornings — the サザエさん症候群 (Sazae-san shoukougun — Sazae-san Syndrome, named after the Sunday evening anime whose ending signals the approaching work week) is the collective dread that descends as the weekend ends. Tweets of ‘だるい’ or ‘だるすぎる’ reliably spike on Sunday evenings, functioning as communal complaint and solidarity around the universal feeling of not wanting the weekend to end.
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