At last I was in Japan. I stepped out of the plane into the Narita Airport building for the first time. I was walking toward immigration when I saw it. It was the first time in my life. Two Japanese were standing in front of each other, bowing, bowing, and bowing. The greeting seemed endless. Here, however, I found something very shocking: they were saying a lot but I could not understand anything! For the first time, I was in a country where I could not even guess a single word of the local language. To me, although those two people were saying something to each other, it just sounded like noise. However, I could catch one of the sounds very clearly. It was DOMO.
On the way out of the airport, I could hear again and again that same domo. I had to find out what it was. Walking beside me was a French businessman on his second trip to Japan. He looked like an expert on things Japanese. "Well," he said, "my experience has taught me that it means something like thank you." Then he went on explaining. "When you want to thank anyone for anything and be polite at the same time, just say 'domo' and it will be all right. And don't forget. You have to bow every time you say thank you." On hearing that, I said to myself, "Hey, this is a very useful expression. I must remember it."
When I arrived at the dormitory, a professor from the university was waiting for me. I wanted to make a good impression. So I bowed and said something like. "bla bla bla domo bla bla domo domo domo." I did my best to say the domo very clearly. The rest was in a very soft and impossible-to-understand voice. Just the sounds.
Notice that I repeated the last domo three times. I wanted to sound very polite. In English it sounds very strange if you repeat thank you so many times, but in Japanese it did not sound bad at all. Anyway, I didn't know what I was saying. The professor looked at me and smiled. "Oh! You speak Japanese very well." I was very happy. Only a few hours in the country, and I was already mastering the rules of Japanese politeness. The French businessman was right. A bow and a domo, and everybody is happy.
One of the students from the dormitory broke my tennis racket. He could not speak English very well, so he said something like, "Domo, racket no good." He seemed to be very sorry. But he was saying domo - thank you. I got a little angry! You can imagine. I lend him my racket, he breaks it and comes back saying. "Thank you. "Unbelievable! Anyway, the following day he bought me a new one.
The other day I was outside the dormitory waiting for a friend to pick me up. He was quite late, in fact more than 30 minutes late. Aren't the Japanese usually on time? Perhaps my friend was different. At last he turned up. "Domo, domo, Did you wait long?" He came at me waving his right hand. "These Japanese are really funny people," I told myself. "He is late and comes saying, 'Thank you, thank you.'" I was getting very confused. In this country do you have to say thank you for everything you do?
I had already been in the county for four months and I still could not speak Japanese. But I wanted to sound as polite as I could. So I began to speak very strange-sounding English. Here are some examples:
"Thank you, I was late."
"Thank you, this rain won't stop."
"Thank you, excuse me."
"Thank you I thought I saw Mr. Tanaka, but it was another person."
"Thank you, it has been a long time since we last met."
"Thank you, thank you."