Japanese Lesson of the Week: Week #5.

Japanese individuals are very, very polite. At our newcomer's brief they stressed the importance of being polite in return and to err on the side of caution and be more polite than you think a greeting may call for. For example if you meet someone and they introduce himself as Yama, it would be appropriate to address him as Yama-san. Adding san to an individual's name denotes respect and works for any gender. It is the equivalent of saying "Miss" or "Mister" in English.

Therefore a key phrase to learn if you are intending to visit Japan is "excuse me". This phrase would be especially helpful if you are traveling down a busy street and must make your way between people.

The word for "excuse me" in Japanese is sumimasen. Sumimasen is pronounced as soo-mee-mah-sen.

If you would like to go back to a previous "JLOTW" feature, simply click on the label "jlotw" on the bottom of this entry and it will take you to all the previous entries with the same label. This would be easier than going through pages and pages of other entries as well. Happy learning!