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Firstly, is "ダウンアンダー" the correct spelling? I think it is, based on the
Japanese Wikipedia articles
[メン・アット・ワーク](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%A1%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%82%A2%E3%83%83%E3%83%88%E3%83%BB%E3%83%AF%E3%83%BC%E3%82%AF)
and [ツアー・ダウンアンダー
](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%84%E3%82%A2%E3%83%BC%E3%83%BB%E3%83%80%E3%82%A6%E3%83%B3%E3%82%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%83%80%E3%83%BC),
but I could be mistaken.

But apart from that, is the average non-Australian Japanese speaker likely to
understand the term, which is used as slang to refer to Australia (even though
there's plenty of other southern hemisphere countries)?
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-01-03T08:41:28.340
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2016-01-03T14:41:21.697
91
question
words slang loanwords
Is ダウンアンダー understood by non-Australian Japanese speakers?
The short answer would be a simple 'No'. Seriously, I do not think that the
word 「ダウンアンダー」 would exist in the vocabulary of more than even 1% of us.

The most common name for your country in Japanese is 「オーストラリア」 by a landslide,
followed by 「[豪州]{ごうしゅう}」. In people's daily conversations, it is 「オーストラリア」
nearly 100% of the time. 「豪州」 is kind of "common" in the printed media because
it is a neat space-saver.

「ダウンアンダー」? One used to hear/see the word when Men At Work were popular (But
that is like 30 years ago!). I suppose we just never registered it as a
household word.

(I have personally used both 「ダウンアンダー」 and "Down Under" a few times in my
conversations with Australians living in Japan, and I seemed to surprise them
each time for even using those words actively as a Japanese person who has
never been to ダウンアンダー. This should probably tell you something about how
uncommon 「ダウンアンダー」 is around here.)
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-01-03T14:41:21.697
30212
2016-01-03T14:41:21.697
30209
answer