Manners and Courtesy of Japanese People

Hi, it’s Yoshio.

I have lived in China because of work and I feel the good points of Japan especially since coming back to Japan.

One of them is good manners and good courtesy of Japanese people.

My foreign friends have impression that Japanese people is pretty polite, and I often hear hear related things about that.

Therefore, today I want to speak about good manners and good courtesy of Japanese people.

Contents

Specific Example Of “Good Manners” And “Good Courtesy”

Customer Service Attitude

I have impression that there are many staff pretty politely serving customers at convenience store, restaurant and so on.

I think some foreigner feel that staff of convenience store is polite just seeing his or her gesture of putting the item in the bag.

But it’s normal thing for Japanese people, so people who haven’t experienced customer service in foreign country may not feel that so much.

Stand In Line For The Train

This varies by country?

There are no habit of standing in line for public transport such as train and bus in China, and I got bewildered so much at first.

I had lived there several years and had gotten used to it, though haha.

Clean Up After Watching Match

The news that Japanese spectators cleaned up after watching match in the FIFA World Cup became hot topic before.

I can understand this as natural behavior because I think, I wouldn’t say it’s normal thing, but there are many people staring to clean up if there are many garbage in the Japanese person’s intuition.

It’s good news for Japanese.

What Is The Reason Of “Good Manners” And “Good Courtesy”?

Why Japanese people have good manners and good courtesy?

This time I studied and considered about this theme so that I can speak about it.

Major reason of that is education.

I imagine greeting, bow and so on are taught from a very young age.

It may be same in other countries, but I hear that Japanese is the language which greeting expression is more than other language, so this may be related with the reason.

For example, the greeting of “Let’s eat” and “Thanks for the nice meal”.

These words of greeting are said before and after meals, but this culture is not all countries have.

So it may make some foreigners feel polite just saying these greeting.

When it comes to school education, there is a rule that we should clean our classroom and school by ourselves.

This is related with the content I just spoke in the specific example section.

And the culture of valuing group harmony is deeply rooted in Japan, so this can also be a reason.

It’s like this, people in the group naturally start considering how to get along well, so they can acquire manners and courtesy in that environment.

Then why Japan has the culture of valuing group harmony? Such a content I can deep dive into, so I want to study and introduce at another time.

My Personal Opinion

I think good manners and good courtesy of Japanese people are at a very good level in the world.

That’s why Japanese service quality is also good.

But people who haven’t been to foreign country see everything by Japanese standards, so some people doesn’t have good impression for foreign countries.

I also had been seeing everything by Japanese standards until I went abroad for the first time.

It’s the state of not really feeling that normal thing in Japan is not normal in other countries, can you understand with this expression?

I think it’s important to understand that Japanese environment is very good and accept the service even if that quality is not better than Japanese.

I explained by the topic of service, but manners and courtesy are also the same with that.

I think it’s not natural to ask people whose growing environment is not same with Japanese people for same manners and courtesy with Japanese people, and again I say, it’s important to accept the other person.