広い
ひろい
hiroi
= spacious; wide; broad; vast; large (of area)
Hiroi (広い) captures the feeling of having room to breathe — whether you’re stepping into a surprisingly large Tokyo apartment or gazing across an open field. It specifically describes two-dimensional spread and area, making it the go-to word whenever horizontal space is the point.
Hiroi describes something as spatially wide, broad, or spacious in terms of surface area or extent. It applies to physical spaces like rooms, roads, parks, and fields, as well as abstract notions of scope or breadth. Its direct antonym is semai (狭い), meaning narrow or cramped — a word many Tokyo renters know all too well.
Unlike ookii (大きい), which means big or large in a general sense, hiroi specifically implies horizontal spread. A tall building is ookii; a wide courtyard is hiroi. This distinction matters in everyday speech: you would say hiroi heya (広い部屋) for a spacious room, focusing on floor area, rather than ookii heya.
Hiroi also appears in figurative expressions. Kokoro ga hiroi (心が広い) means broad-minded or generous — literally “having a wide heart.” Hiroi imi de (広い意味で) means “in a broad sense,” used in academic or formal writing to signal a wider interpretation.
The most common mistake is swapping hiroi and ookii. When talking about area — floor space, land, a road’s width — choose hiroi. When talking about overall size or volume (a large car, a big tree), use ookii. A helpful test: if you could measure it in square meters, hiroi is likely correct.
Note that hiroi conjugates like all i-adjectives: past tense hirokatta (広かった), negative hiroku nai (広くない). In real estate and apartment listings, you will often see it written simply as 広 in shorthand descriptions.
The kanji 広 is built on the radical 广 (まだれ, madare), a pictograph of a roof or shelter extending outward. The full character adds 厶 beneath, suggesting space spreading under a wide canopy. This visual logic of something stretching out horizontally underlies the modern meaning of wideness and breadth.
Everyday use
この部屋、思ったより広いね。
Kono heya, omotta yori hiroi ne.
This room is more spacious than I expected.
Casual / Social Media
このカフェ、天井が高くて広くて最高！
Kono kafe, tenjou ga takakute hirokute saikou!
This café has high ceilings and tons of space — absolutely love it!
Formal / Cultural context
当該土地は約500平方メートルの広い敷地を有する。
Tougai tochi wa yaku gohyaku heihōmētoru no hiroi shikichi wo yūsuru.
The property in question has a wide lot of approximately 500 square meters.
In Japan, living space is a premium — the average Tokyo apartment sits around 36 square meters, roughly a third of what many Western renters consider standard. Against this backdrop, calling a room hiroi carries real weight. Real estate listings lean heavily on the word as a selling point, and tenants who find a genuinely spacious unit often share their surprise online. The cultural significance of hiroi space is inseparable from the everyday reality that most urban Japanese residents live in close quarters.
Beyond physical rooms, hiroi reflects a Japanese cultural value around open-mindedness and tolerance. The phrase kokoro ga hiroi (心が広い) — literally “a wide heart” — is used to praise someone who is patient, accepting, and not easily rattled by others’ differences or mistakes. Conversely, calling someone kokoro ga semai (心が狭い, “narrow-hearted”) is a pointed criticism of pettiness or intolerance. This figurative dimension shows how a simple spatial adjective has grown to describe character as well as landscape.