計画
けいかく
keikaku
= plan / scheme / project
計画 (keikaku) means a plan — a deliberate, worked-out course of action, from a weekend trip to a national infrastructure project. Many English-speaking learners first meet it through the anime meme ‘keikaku doori’, where a scheming character announces that everything is going exactly as planned.
計画 is a plan in the strong sense: something designed with intent, structure, and usually steps or stages. It fits a business 計画 (project), a 旅行の計画 (travel plan), or a grand 都市計画 (city-planning scheme). It works both as a noun and, with する, as a verb — 計画する means ‘to plan (something out)’. As an adjective-like form, 計画的 (keikaku-teki) describes doing things in a planned, methodical way.
The nuance becomes clear when you compare 計画 with its neighbors. 予定 (yotei) is a ‘schedule’ or ‘arrangement’ — what is set to happen, like a dentist appointment — and carries no sense of design. つもり (tsumori) is a personal ‘intention’ you hold in your head. 計画 sits above both: it implies you have actually mapped out how to reach a goal. Saying 旅行の予定 means a trip is on the calendar, while 旅行の計画 means you have worked out the route, budget, and itinerary.
Because 計画 stresses intent and design, it can lean either way in tone. A 事業計画 (business plan) is admirable and professional, but 計画 also pairs naturally with scheming — 計画を練る (keikaku wo neru, ‘to hatch/refine a plan’) and 計画通り (keikaku doori, ‘according to plan’) both suit a villain quietly pulling strings just as easily as a diligent manager.
Do not mix up 計画 with 予定. If a learner says 週末の計画 for a simple lunch date, it can sound oddly grandiose, as if the meal required strategic planning; 週末の予定 (weekend plans/schedule) is the natural choice. Reserve 計画 for things you genuinely designed or organized.
Remember that 計画 readily takes する: 旅行を計画する (‘to plan a trip’) is far more common than forcing it into other verb patterns.
Watch the reading and the kanji. It is kei-kaku, and the second character 画 is read kaku here (as in ‘stroke/plan’), not ‘ga’ as in 映画 (eiga, film). Same character, different reading — a classic source of confusion.
Formal / Cultural context
来月の新商品の販売計画をチームで立てている。
Raigetsu no shinshouhin no hanbai keikaku wo chiimu de tatete iru.
Our team is drawing up the sales plan for next month’s new product.
Everyday use
夏休みの旅行、そろそろ計画しない？
Natsuyasumi no ryokou, sorosoro keikaku shinai?
Should we start planning our summer-vacation trip soon?
Casual / Social Media
全部うまくいった。まさに計画通りだ。
Zenbu umaku itta. Masa ni keikaku doori da.
Everything worked out. Just as planned.
For a huge number of overseas fans, 計画 is inseparable from a piece of anime-translation history. In an early fan-translated release of a hit psychological thriller, a subtitle rendered a character’s line as ‘just according to keikaku’ and then paused to gloss the word — parenthetically noting that keikaku simply means ‘plan’. The awkward decision to keep the Japanese word and explain it on screen became a long-running joke, and ‘keikaku doori’ spread far beyond the original show.
That meme endures because it captures a real storytelling trope. The phrase 計画通り (keikaku doori, ‘exactly as planned’) is the classic line of the mastermind antagonist who has been several moves ahead the whole time. In Japanese fiction, having a villain calmly declare 計画通り at the moment their trap closes is shorthand for cold, superior intelligence, which is why the word carries that scheming flavor for many learners.
Outside of memes and manga, 計画 is a serious, everyday word in Japanese public life. Post-war Japan was shaped by named national schemes, and terms like 都市計画 (urban planning) and 計画停電 (keikaku teiden, ‘planned/rolling blackouts’) — a phrase that became painfully familiar after the 2011 disasters — show how the word signals organized, official, large-scale action, not just personal to-do lists.