Japan Know How archive
Japanese Phrases
Volume carries social meaning in Japan. Learn why an ordinary American speaking voice may feel forceful on a train or in a small restaurant, how to respond when corrected, and which phrases can repair the moment.
Japanese Phrases
A three-second gap in a Japanese conversation is an answer, not a failure. Where silence carries refusal, respect or thought, and when to just wait.
Japanese Culture
Eshaku, keirei and saikeirei - fifteen, thirty and forty-five degrees. A visitor spends almost the whole trip inside the first one, and here is when that stops being true.
Japanese Culture
Japanese etiquette splits into rules of form, which nobody minds you getting wrong, and rules of boundary, which everybody notices. Only one of those lists is worth learning.
