Cold Soapy Fate

This is a delayed blog post.  Also, the title has nothing to do with the contents.  Merely a snippet of goodness from a recent skype conversation I had.

This morning was the first day of work of 2011 (平成２３年度, 23 year of the Heisei period).  To my interest and surprise, everyone wore slightly better clothes to work today and spent the first 10 minutes of work going around and bowing to everybody in the office saying 今年もよろしくお願いします Kotoshi-mo yoroshiku onegaishimasu (This year too, may we work well together).  Yoroshiku onegaishimasu, something that is said very often around the work place and almost as a rule when you meet someone.  It’s probably the strangest phrase to translate and, though you learn from day one in Japanese class, it is still difficult for me to understand when and where to use it.  Often I just throw it in to whatever conversation I’m having at work at the very end, just in case.  Yoroshiku is an adverbial form of ‘good,’  and onegaishimasu means ‘to request, ask, or implore.’  Literally, I guess it means “I will goodly request of you,” or better “I will humbly rely on you.”   Most textbooks translate it as “nice to meet you,” when used in the context of a self-introduction.

Now you can give your self introduction in Japanese too: to say “Hi my name is _____. Nice to meet you,”  you say “Watashi-wa ____________ des. Douzo yoroshiku onegaishimasu.”  私は＿＿＿＿です。どうぞよろしくお願いします。

Right now, I'm in a sort of 'vacation limbo' because, while I have no classes to teach as my kids are still on vacation (or at least the Japanese version of vacation, wherein they still come to school everyday to do sports and have tons of homework), I still have to go to my Board of Education office and 'work' all day.  This can be good at times, because sometimes I do get around to making lesson plans, studying Japanese, or shooting the breeze with my co-workers, but sometimes it can be excruciatingly boring.    Maybe I'll use this time to write those blog entries I've always meant to write...