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So what is goroawase, you might ask? Well, goroawase is a particular system of Japanese mnemonics for numbers, and dates, and other things that is a happy accident of the fact Japanese as a language has three different systems of counting (one native Japanese, one Chinese system that was introduced when Korean Buddhists entered Japan, and one based on English).

Probably the closest you can get as an equivalent to how goroawase tends to be used in Japanese is a combination of how numbers on a dial pad for a phone are sometimes used to spell out specific names (an eccentricity dating from when letters designated exchanges from the OLD days of direct-dial phones) and "pi poetry" or "piphilology"--the idea of using mnemonics to remember many digits of pi. (Of note: One of the few areas where TWEWY:tA did localize things differently than in English...was, in fact, using a famous English "pi mnemonic poem" of spooky nature when Minamimoto recites an extensive goroawase for pi while drawing the Taboo Noise Refinery Sigil.) So there are many, many mnemonics of this sort in Japanese goroawase, and it is (hands down) considered one of the most "untranslatable" concepts in localization (TWEWY and NEO:TWEWY are actually considered master works in how they handled Minamimoto's extensive goroawase without losing the double entendres).

And Shibu-Q Heads (42 for "Shibu"--fun fact, "428" is a goroawase for Shibuya itself):

And one could actually argue the renaming of the real-life Shibuya 109 (whose name itself is a goroawase pun--"109" can be read as "Tokyu", as in Tokyu Group, the owners of the Shibuya 109) and 104 can be read as "tenshi" ('angel') in addition to the obvious "four-is-death" punnery that the game is also rife with). There's...also some outright triple and even quadruple entendres with Route 5 and relationships with Minamimoto. The square root of 5 has a goroawase pun: 2.2360679... 富士山麓オーム啼く (ふじさんろくオームなく) 'Base of Mt. Fuji, a parrot cries.' (Or more loosely: "(As sure as) parrots caw at the base of Mt. Fuji...") The full meaning of that is...itself a bit of a cultural meme/idiom, in that historically the base of Mount Fuji had...a lot of tourist-attraction sites for people wishing to climb the mountain, including multiple sellers with aviaries of parrots (to the point it became known for parrots squawking). This became well known to the point it actually became an idiom that's the rough equivalent of "Is the pope Catholic?" (Despite sedevacantist claims, we're pretty sure the answer is "Yes") or "Does a bear shit in the woods?" (Yes, and they clean up with Charmin toilet roll afterwards, as Proctor and Gamble have been fond of reminding people for the past 30 years in an ad campaign) or even "Do the angles in a rhombus add up to 360 degrees?" (they do!). So basically, idiom for something Really Blatantly Obvious. What is at the end of Route 5, you may ask? Well, the Udagawa Back Streets, that's what (yes, as in where Neku was shot, as in where Minamimoto drew his Taboo Noise Refinery Sigil, as in where Minamimoto has his Leo Cantus Armo Incident in NEO, as in Where A Lot Of The Major Plot Twists Happen In A TWEWY Game) And, well, in NEO...people were at first disappointed when Minamimoto's birthday was revealed to NOT be on Pi Day but February 23rd...until it was realized this was a goddamn quadruple entendre.

THE CAGE, WITH HUMAN SOUL AND PARTS

THE GIRL, WITH HOPE CROSSED ON HER HEART

🔢 –— (It’s x 2) DIE!

(textless version under cut)