For a long time I couldn't pronounce the word otoko (男, man) without slightly blushing; I didn't much like the word in English either, but in Japanese it sounded a little vulgar and what women of my grandmother's generation would call hashitanai (はしたない, crude and ill-mannered).

In my family it was an unspoken taboo for female members to say otoko, and in situations where we had to refer to men, we were expected to call them otokonohito (男の人, male person) or dansei (男性, male). This probably had a lot to do with the fact that in traditional Tokyo shitamachi (下町, downtown) dialect, any woman enunciating the word otoko was referring to a lover or boyfriend or someone she wasn't married to, but having sexual relations (gasp!).

Men, on the other hand, seemed to have less trouble saying onna (女, woman), though my father was always careful to refer to them as josei (女性, female) or fujin (婦人, lady). My brothers and male cousins had a simple solution; they called young women joshi (女子, schoolgirl) and any woman over the age of 25 became obasan (おばさん, middle-aged woman) and this simplified things for them considerably. Under their influence, I began to refer to young men as danshi (男子, schoolboy) well into the late 20s and was grateful how this reference freed me from discomfort and even called up nostalgic memories of grade school and junior high. Time passed, we all reached the ages of obasan and ojisan (おじさん, middle-aged man), but during family get togethers we would privately call each other joshi and danshi and recall the golden days of school and seishun (青春, blue spring, or youth).