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gobo-gobo, niko-niko, dara-dara, kira-kira, batchiri, shibu-shibu - the list goes on. All these are what are called gitaigo, or onomatopoeia, in Japanese. Gitaigo are visceral, vivid, essential to the Japanese language, lying right at its heart, and nothing will make you sound more like a native-speaker than peppering your speech with them.

But the scope of Japanese onomatopoeia is so huge that mastering it is one of the language learner's biggest challenges (much bigger, say, than mastering the spelling of "onomatopoeia"!)

Even more than when learning regular Japanese vocabulary, gitaigo are best learned organically, i.e., by picking up on them in people's conversations, noting what context they are used in, and then trying them out in your own conversations.
However, even those already familiar with gitaigo might not be aware of the various classifications within them.

There are five classes of gitaigo, and, strictly speaking, they are not all called gitaigo - only one class of them.

Giseigo ???, literally "voice-mimicking words," giseigo ??? refer to sounds that humans and other living things make, such as boo-boo ???? ("oink oink" in English), or ogyaa ???? ("mew mew" - a kitten's cry), or petcha-petcha ?????? ("prattle-prattle").

Giongo ???, or "sound-mimicking words" are for representing sounds made by inanimate objects in the natural world, such as goro-goro ???? (the rolling of thunder), or shit...