of course, that must be it, I knew it
yahari (or yapari, yappari or yappasi, all common variants of the same word) should be your response when someone tells you something and you:
- suspected it was true all along
- knew about it, but didn't want to say
- have a sudden flash of insight
- can suddenly form a conclusion because the new information is like the last piece in a puzzle
it's one of the words that identifies you as fluent in Japanese, because it signals that you understand how communication in Japanese works.
how does it work?
that's going to take a little bit more space than I have right now, but suffice it say that one of the keys to communication is the notion of shared information. what yahari does in that context is it informs the previous speaker, the person for whom you are having the yahari reaction, that you have already been thinking about what he or she was seeing. not only that, but that he or she just provided you with vital new information.
it's sort of akin to Archimedes' 'eureka' moment, except that ol' Archimedes was likely alone when he said it, and it was his own observation of his rising bathwater that prompted it.
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