実家に帰る頻度と家族との過ごし方

What does 実家 (jikka) mean in Japanese?

実家 (jikka) is not just “home” — it specifically means your parents' house, the place you grew up, used once you’ve moved out and are talking about visiting or calling it. A twentysomething living alone in Tokyo still calls their childhood house in Osaka their jikka, even though they now live somewhere else entirely. It’s a small word that carries a lifetime of address changes.

In this clip, two friends compare how often they make it back: one admits 実家に一回ぐらいしか帰れてない (“I can barely get back to my jikka once a year”), while another describes staying overnight, 一泊する. 実家 sits alongside 家 (ie, the physical building) and うち (uchi, the emotionally-loaded “my place”) — but only jikka locks onto “your parents,” regardless of where you personally live now. You’ll also hear 実家暮らし (jikka-gurashi) for an adult who still lives with their parents, and 実家に帰る (jikka ni kaeru) as the standard way to say “go home to visit family.”