A lot of people ask about bowing in Japan, and what they should do if they ever visit or live in Japan. Now, bowing in Japan is so deeply ingrained in culture and society that it’s not something people really think too much about (unless you’re in business, but we’ll talk about that in a bit). If you’re a foreigner, you’re probably not going to be expected to bow all the time, though that depends on the person. There are, however, so many different ways one can and should bow, depending on the situation (which can make it confusing if you didn’t grow up bowing to everyone your whole life).

Firstly, Bowing Should Be Natural

One thing that I get a kick out of is people who don’t know any better and think bowing should be done like it’s seen in anime. They do the full 45 degree bow and hold it there for a few seconds. On top of this, they make a big deal out of it. Stand straight up, rigid for a second, then slam their head down into their really deep bow, thinking that all Japanese people bow this way.

The thing is, 90% of the time (and even more, unless you’re working in business) bows are incredibly casual and small, even getting down to small nods of the head. We’re going to talk about bowing and how depth, etc., effects what you’re trying to communicate in your bow, but for now, if you’re one of those rigid deep bowers, relax a bit and don’t think about it so much.

What Does A Bow Mean In Japan?

The meaning of a bow totally depends on the situation, depth, and length of time you hold your bow. Bowing in Japan shows respect for the person or thing you’re bowing to. Societal ranking in Japanese is really important. If you’re higher up in society from another person, you’ll notice that they talk more politely to you (to a greater extent than what we do in America / Western cultures), bow more deeply, and even perhaps order the same food as you at a restaurant (so as to not out-food you, of course).

Bows are only one of the many ways you can show respect and humble yourself in front of another person. Depending on who you’re bowing to, you can bow more deeply, bow longer, or even, perhaps, not bow at all. Beyond humbling yourself, it seems like you can bow for almost any other reason at all. You can bow to greet people, say thank you, say you’re sorry, when you’re congratulating someone, and more. I’ve broken all this down into bullets to make it easier for you, and while the breakdown isn’t perfect it should give you some idea of the different things bowing can communicate.

• The nod-bow, 5 Degrees: This is just a small nod of your head. Make sure your head goes forward (we’re not nodding backwards and lifting our chin). The nod-bow is for pretty good friends, and is the most casual bow of them all (because it’s the smallest and shortest). There is another situation you might use this bow in, though. If you’re a higher ranking person (in society, work, whatever) than the person you’re bowing to, you could also use this small nod-bow. Bowing is meant to humble yourself, so if you’re higher ranking, you don’t have to humble yourself too much (but by bowing a little bit, you’re at least acknowledging the other person).
• Greeting Bow, Eshaku (会釈), 15 Degrees: This bow is for greetings, mostly for people you already know or are equals with. The “nod-bow” above is similar, but for when you know someone a lot better. This bow is probably for people you’ve met before and are familiar with, but not familiar enough to just go for the nod.
• Respect Bow, Keirei (敬礼), 30 degrees: This is where bowing gets respectful. Thirty degrees is actually quite a lot and feels like quite a lot, if you go ahead and do it. This bow is reserved for your boss / other people who are higher ranking than you. You could probably do a little more than 30 degrees if you wanted to, too. You wouldn’t use this bow with good friends or relatives (unless you were making a joke), so save this for people you don’t know / people who are above you on that societal scale.
• Highest Respect Bow, Saikeirei 最敬礼, 45 degrees: Say you screw up, big time… perhaps you made some cars that accelerate to 80 mph and crash into things and you need to apologize, or perhaps you’re bowing the the emperor. This is the bow you should use, because it shows the most amount of respect (or regret) possible (at least, until you get on your knees). You won’t need to use this one very often, if you’re lucky.
• Kneeling Bow, Touch Your Head To The Floor: You don’t see this kind of bow very much anymore. This is the kind of bow you see people doing in Samurai flicks when a daimyo goes by (or they messed up really really bad). If you’re flipping out at something terrible you did (like, really terrible), you might just flip out enough to get on your knees and touch your head to the ground (but more likely than not, you won’t ever do this kind of bow, unless you’re doing some kind of martial arts or you’re just trying to be funny).

I also found this image, below, which covers some of the bowing levels that I broke out above. These are the three main ones, and do a good job showing how you should bow. Notice how the guy’s hands are by his side, and his eyes are facing the same direction as his head? The lower your bow, the more you should look down.

Returning Bows

Knowing how much to bow is often pretty hard. It’s sort of a game of “guess who” where you try to figure out the other person’s age, status, company, etc., to figure out how much you need to humble yourself at their expense. There’s a few good ways to do this, though you’ll often find yourself just doing something in between (or overly respectful, just in case) because you don’t know enough about the other person. First though, here are some rules on bowing:

• You should bow back to people who bow at you (with a couple exceptions… i.e. people who greet you at stores / people who try to hand you things on the street).
• Try to get the other person’s business card (people hand out their business card like nothing in Japan). On it should be their company and title, which will give you an idea about where they are in the world.
• Try to guess how old they are. Chances are, if they’re older than you, they’re above you in almost every way. Treat your elders with respect, yo!

If all else fails, just go for the 30 degree bow. It’s right in the middle, respectful, and you probably won’t go wrong with it. The main thing with bowing, I think, is that you put the effort in. Like I mentioned earlier, Japanese people generally don’t expect foreigners to know the ins and outs of bowing. They also don’t expect foreigners to do bowing 100% perfect all of the time. The most important thing is that you don’t make it look rigid and unnatural. Try to relax, bow, and have fun!

Other Fun Tidbits About Bowing

Bowing is so ingrained in Japanese culture that you’ll see it in some funny instances. Here are some “exceptions” (or, at least, odd situations) you might run across a Japanese bow as well as what you should do about it.

Bowing On the Telephone:

Japanese people are so naturally inclined to bow that they often bow on the telephone, too, even though nobody can see them. Usually telephone bows won’t go beyond the “nod-bow” but there are some who are really, really hardcore. Once you’re bowing on the telephone, you’ll know you’ve spent a good amount of time in Japan.

Employees At Stores, Bowing To You:

Normally it’s nice to bow back to people, but a lot of times you’ll run into people greeting you at stores (not at all like a Walmart greeter) with enthusiastic welcomes and bows. You don’t have to stop and bow back to these people. Don’t worry, they’re getting paid.

Bowing A Train Away:

Occasionally you’ll come across someone seeing off someone getting on a train. The other person will get on and they’ll bow (and hold that bow) until the train is completely gone from the station. That right there is devotion! You, however, will probably never have to do this. Relationships that require this are fairly rare, and as a foreigner to Japan there’s a low likelihood that you’d need to do this (and even if you did, you probably wouldn’t be expected to either). Aside from trains, you’ll see this with cars and elevators as well.

Bowing Over And Over Again:

Often times when you’re bowing with someone, the bows will start off deeper, then gradually get smaller and shorter the more times you bow. It’s kind of a “hey, you bowed, I better bow again,” which is responded to with a “oh no, he/she bowed again, I better bow too,” and this keeps on going until the bows get small enough where both sides can stop. You just don’t want to get out-bowed by the other person if you’re trying to show respect to them (this happens most in equal relationships).

P.S. You should do a small 15 degree bow to Tofugu on Twitter by following it.

P.P.S. If that wasn’t enough, you should do a 45 degree bow to the Tofugu Newsletter.

Related posts:

1. In Japan, You Visit A Scary Japanese Doctor 12+ Times A Year
2. 12 Completely (Un)inspiring Images To Help You Learn Kanji

I just read a great article by awesome j-blog WhatJapanThinks, which translates Japanese surveys into English for your enjoyment. This particular article is titled “How Japanese Call Their Partners.” i.e., what Japanese guys and gals call their significant others. I thought it was a particularly interesting study, and since what you call someone says a lot about someone in Japanese (There’s a lesson about this on TextFugu, if you’re a member), but this article goes deeper into one particular niche… the girlfriend / boyfriend. Oh baby oh baby.

Survey Results

Although you can read about the entire survey here, here are the most important bits of information for this particular article. Data was collected by iShare, and translated by WhatJapanThinks.

★ How do you most often refer to your partner? (Sample size=383)

*Most Common nicknames were those with -tan or -nyan added to the end of names

★ How does your partner most often refer to you? (Sample size=383)

*Most Common nicknames were those with -tan or -nyan added to the end of names

★ If you were to be called a name by a partner, which would you most want to be called? (Sample size=484)

Now, this data that was collected consisted of 289 males, and 195 females, which means the “All” percentages will tend to lean toward the male point of view, and this is what I want to focus on, especially with my special interest in male / female speech patterns (which I wrote about in the Japan Times in 2009). Let’s take a look at the top results, broken down by male/female from each data-set, and compare.

How do you refer to your partner?

• Men: Given Name Only (i.e. first name without -kun, -san, -chan, etc., name enders). 36%
• Women: Given Name plus -chan, -kun. 30.4%

In this data block, it’s interesting to see that the largest group of men who took the survey refer to their girlfriends without using name-enders like -kun, -chan, etc., whereas women response shows that their largets percentage block do call their boyfriends by name + chan / kun. Let’s keep this in mind while we move on to the next data-set.

How does your partner refer to you?

• Men: Given name plus chan, kun. 34.7%
• Women: Given name only. 34.2%

Of course, the opposite of the first dataset should be true, and that’s reflected here. Men are referred to by their name + chan / kun, and women are referred to by their given name only. This helps to validate the above data set even further.

What would you like to be called most?

• Men: Given name plus chan, kun. 27%
• Women: Given name only. 39.5%

This is the most interesting table, I think. Although it was fairly split up amongst men (#1 was given name + chan / kun, but there was a close second, which was “given name only”), the women pretty much only had one answer that really stood out, which was “given name only.” I find it really interesting that women are most interested in being called by their given name only, though they are more often calling their significant others by given name + chan / kun.

Although I have very little real data to back this up, I think there are some interesting hypothesis that can be.. er… hypothesized from this.

1. This is part of the whole “women must talk like women” thing… i.e. more polite, more submissive, etc. Even though kun / chan aren’t necessarily considered to be “polite” in the purest sense (nothing wrong with using these on your significant other, though), it is considered more “polite” than just doing given name without adding an honorific to the end.
2. Since “given name only” was a close second for men (26.3% versus 27%), and the top spot for “what would you like to be called most” when you add male/female responses together, this could be showing a change in the Japanese language towards a more Western style of language (i.e. just calling people by their first names, at least in casual situations). I’m not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing, but the Japanese language does change very quickly, and this could be one of those changes. People surveyed in this study were between the ages of 20-50, which, overall, is pretty young, and could represent a more “modern” generation that is making various changes to the language. It’s hard to look at this data and get too much more out of it without looking at the age groups individually, and then getting more results per age group.
3. Everyone actually calls each other “snuggy-bottoms” and just don’t want to admit it.

What insight can you pull from the survey data? Personally, I’m not all that good with numbers / statistics unless it involves baseball, so I’m sure I’m missing something, and would love to hear what you think, even if it’s something like “Koichi, you’re full of #$!@.”

What Should You Call YOUR Japanese Sweetheart?

If, by chance, you had a Japanese boyfriend or girlfriend, and you didn’t want to call them Snuggy-bottoms, I’d stick with the given name + kun / chan. It’s safe, it works, and there’s nothing wrong with it. The four “main” ways to do it are:

1. Given name only
2. Given name plus kun, chan
3. Nickname (i.e. snuggy bottoms)
4. Given name plus -san

Everything else drops way off there, and seem kind of weird. I feel sad for the 1-2% of people who are just called “you” or “Hey” or “Oy!” … unless their name is actually “you” or “hey” or “oy,” then I guess it’s okay.

Oh, and before you go, you should follow me on Twitter.

No related posts.

I’ve been in Hawaii the past week or so, a few days of which was spent with my host family from when I home-stayed in Japan in high school. Having them over here in America (though, Hawaii is about as Japanese as America gets) really brings out some of the subtle cultural differences between Japanese people and Americans. Particularly, though, we spent a lot of time at restaurants, so I thought I’d talk a bit today about Japanese restaurant culture. When at various eating places, it made me realize how things in Japanese restaurants are done a little bit differently. Nothing drastic or too strange, but things that are good to know when you’re over in Japan.

Calling out for service:
This was something that surprised me a little when living in Japan. People call out to the waiters/waitresses for service. You don’t wait for someone to come to you, you tell them when and why you want them over at your table. When we went out to restaurants here in Hawaii, I had to tell them not to yell at the waiter to come over every couple of minutes, despite their irritation that nobody was coming to take their orders when they wanted.

I could be wrong about this, but I consider it rude to call out to waiters / waitresses when you want something. I’m not talking about a soft “excuse me” or a wave to get their attention, I’m talking a fairly loud shout across the room when you want something. In Japan, however, it’s okay to do this. Feel free to shout out a moderately loud “sumimasen!” or even a “suman!” if you’re a little drunk and rude. This is a good way to get someone’s attention, as some places might be waiting for this call before they come by.

Tiny Glasses of Water:
I’m someone who needs to drink a lot of liquids at a meal. I like the big glass of water, and I drink it down fast. In fact, the percentage of my tip is completely dependent on how good a place is at refilling my water. A really good water filler will get 20% from me, whereas someone who does a poor job will get 10% or lower, depending on how everything else is.

In Japan, however, they like things small. Most places only give tiny glasses of water, and do a fairly poor job refilling. My host family always commented on the large glasses of water when they were here in Hawaii, while when I was over there I’d comment about how small they were. It’s just how it is. One good way to get around this is to ask them to put your water in a beer glass / beer mug. Those tend to be much larger, and will help you survive more of the meal if you’re big on liquids, like me.

Oh, I suppose you can call out to your waitress / waiter as well, and they’ll refill your water for you. For me, though, that would be like every minute, and got embarrassing after a while.

Getting Food Even when you Can’t Read the Menu:
I know a lot of people make their way to Japan without being able to read Japanese well. If you can’t read at least hiragana/katakana, I can’t help you. A lot of places will have pictures, or even plastic models of their main courses, so if this is the case you can point and say “kore, 1, kore, 1.” But what about when you go to a mom n’ pop shop type food place? Their menus are written or typed out, bare, simple, and lack pictures.

Luckily, you’ll find a lot of places using katakana within their menu items. This is a good secret to know. If you are at least familiar with different types of foods, and you can read katakana, you can at least find a few things on the menu you might be interested in. For example, things like “katsu” and “ramen” tend to be written in katakana. That will get you a little closers to finding what you want, anyways. At that point, you can point and say “kore, 1″ without completely guessing.

Then again, if you’re adventurous, go for it. Japanese food is usually pretty awesome, no matter what you get.

Grabbing Food from the Communal Platter:
When doing a “family style” meal, where there’s food in the middle and everyone takes from it, there are often times where you will use your chopsticks to get at this food. I’ve heard a couple of takes on this. Some people say close friends and family shouldn’t use the back (or fat) ends of their chopsticks to take food, since using the eating sides of your chopsticks shows how close you are. With family, yes, I think this is very common. With close friends, I’m not sure. I would just see what other people are doing, and follow along.

If you are eating with people that aren’t really close friends or family, then yes, it’s important you turn your chopsticks around to grab the food. If you don’t know how to use chopsticks, then you should probably turn your fork around and look like the idiot you are for going to Japan without learning how to use chopsticks beforehand.

Fighting for the Bill:
I thought fighting for the bill here in America was hard enough. In Japan, it’s like a no-holds-barred fight-to-the-death cage match. It’s important to fight hard to pay for the bill, especially if you’re older. Usually, the person who is higher up on the hierarchy ladder tends to pay, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to pay too. It really depends on the relationship with the people you are eating with, though. From my experience, a senpai will try to pay for a kohai, though splitting the bill seems to be more common than before. Still, though, make sure you insist on paying for something, even if you plan on losing the bill paying battle. If you lose, insist you will pay next time, and try to do it. Japanese people tend to keep track of gifts and who owes who what, so it’s a good idea to try and repay someone for their kindness if you can with something of a similar value. This goes for all presents and gifts, not just food. Luckily, though, younger folks are exempt, just like in America.

No Tipping:
It’s lucky that you don’t tip in Japan (at all), because otherwise restaurants wouldn’t get anything from me due to their weak water refilling skillz. No matter how great the service, you don’t have to tip, saving you around 15% at each meal. Even if you think Japanese food is expensive (and it isn’t, really, if you go to the right places), you are saving money not having to tip, which I think is pretty sweet. I also haven’t seen a lack of service due to the lack of tipping, which is also nice. It’s just not part of the culture.

My host family always complained about having to tip everywhere here in Hawaii – they just don’t know how easy they have it!

Time to Go Eat!
I hope this helps you a little bit with going to a Japanese restaurant. It’s probably best to avoid places that have “No Gaijin” printed on the front of their stores, which sadly still exist, though are fairly rare. Don’t let a lack of pictures / plastic models of food stop you from going somewhere. I’d say the best places are the mom n’ pop shops. Real down to earth cooking, right there, and the prices tend to be more reasonable while the portions are bigger.

Do you have any Japanese restaurant tips? Share them in the comments!

No related posts.