“Ohayo!” it was a word I heard every morning during two weeks I spent with some Japanese in a student encounter, East Asia Student Encounter (EASE), between Satya Wacana Christian University (SWCU) – Indonesia and Kwansei Gakuin University (KGU) – Japan. Literary ohayo means good morning, in some way people also say ohayo gozaimasu which has same meaning, but different sense. Ohayo gozaimasu sounds formal and shows respectful expression. In fact the word ohayo itself has a deeper meaning than good morning, even though it means good morning, but say ohayo has a deeper sense than greeting. It means, “Good morning, nice to see you this morning, have a nice day.” It feels like some word or even the way they speak shows a deep sense of words. Spending two weeks to stay with Japanese makes me find a beauty of Japanese language.
That was my first experience staying with Japanese, and I didn’t have any background knowledge about Japan, especially the language. Listening to the way some the Japanese talk to the others gives me a clue that there are so many words, which may sound simple and have simple meaning, but has a deep sense and utterance. It looks like a little thing which is so meaningful.
Take for example when I asked one of Japanese participants, Nanako Thsuchikara, how we could introduce ourselves in Japanese she said,
“Hajimeshithe! Watashi wa Nanako desu. Dozoyoroishiku(onegaishimasu)!”
I paid more attention to the last phrase dozoyoroishiku(onegaishimasu). Nanahko explained to me that commonly we only say dozoyoroishiku without onegaishimasu after giving information about ourselves such as name, address, or any else. We may state the complete phrase to make it formal and serious. We may translate dozoyoroishiku(onegaishimasu) into “nice to meet you”, but in fact it has different sense. Dozoyoroishiku(onegaishimasu) means more than “nice to meet you”, it has sense as “nice to meet you, I hope we can cooperate each other”.
From this phrase I found that a relationship or fellowship is something important for the Japanese. I found that during two weeks they tried to make friends with Indonesian participants by keeping themselves do anything in a good manner and showing that they really enjoyed the program. Here showing a positive response is something important for them.
I remember that before the program the leader of Indonesia reminded all the Indonesian participants to say thank you every time we have cooperation, even a very small cooperation, with the Japanese participants. At the first I thought it was funny. How could we say thank you all time? It would sound too much. However, it made me think about Japanese language, is there any word or phrase which carried the sense of thankful except arigato(gozaimasu)?
While talking to another Japanese participant, Haruka Sogabe, she introduced me a new word; otsukaresama(deshita) which means “(bye) that’s all our job today, thank you for the cooperation (see you).” It is interesting that Japanese has a special greeting after doing something together, especially cooperation in doing things like job, presentation, project, etc. I found in some Japanese cartoon, which were popular in Indonesia, this phrase is translated into “maaf sudah merepotkan (sorry to make you in trouble)” which is stated after working together, and I found that there’s a sense of thankful in this phrase.
Japanese language represents a deep beauty of culture, only from the language I could find that they have a culture that make them keep the relationship (relationship oriented) and appreciate to the others.
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