I’m transitioning from textbooks (Tobira) to general japanese media for my studying and I’m trying to learn words that Japanese people use everyday but I haven’t learned in class.
For example, I remember the first time I watched Terrace House, I was wondering what this やばい word meant considering they used it every other line!
I second that! I hear a new 擬音語 almost every day… they are used a lot in daily conversation. There’s a great article on Tofugu which covers loads of them.
In a similar vein to やばい is おもろい、a shortened (casual) version of 面白い、meaning funny/hilarious/weird.
Edit – Also, the Sou Matome N2 description of やばい (most of these are in textbooks; just really specific ones) is absolutely hysterical. I need to come back to this later to edit in a photo I took of it.