Greetings are the first Japanese almost everyone learns, and also the first place textbook Japanese goes subtly wrong. The words are easy; knowing which one fits the situation is the actual skill.
Here are the phrases worth knowing, with the context that makes them land.
The core greetings
- おはようございます (ohayou gozaimasu) — good morning. Drop ございます with friends: おはよう. In many workplaces it's used as a general "first time I've seen you today" greeting, even in the evening.
- こんにちは (konnichiwa) — hello / good afternoon. Note the spelling: written は, pronounced "wa", because it's the topic particle fossilized into the phrase (more on that particle). Trap: you don't say this to family or close colleagues you see daily — it's slightly distant.
- こんばんは (konbanwa) — good evening. Same は spelling quirk.
- おやすみなさい (oyasuminasai) — good night, said when parting for sleep. Casual: おやすみ.
Leaving and arriving
- さようなら (sayounara) — goodbye, but heavier than English "bye". It carries a sense of "we won't meet for a while", so it sounds strange to a coworker you'll see tomorrow. Use じゃあね / またね (casual) or 失礼します (shitsurei shimasu, leaving a formal setting) instead.
- いってきます / いってらっしゃい — "I'm off" / "come back safely", said in a household when someone leaves.
- ただいま / おかえりなさい — "I'm home" / "welcome back".
Thanks and apologies
- ありがとうございます — thank you. Drop ございます with friends. Past tense ありがとうございました for something already completed.
- すみません (sumimasen) — the workhorse. It means "excuse me", "sorry", and "thank you for the trouble". Use it to get a server's attention, to squeeze past someone, or to accept a favor.
- ごめんなさい (gomen nasai) — a real apology, more personal than すみません. Casual: ごめん.
- 申し訳ありません (moushiwake arimasen) — formal apology for business or serious situations.
Phrases that carry you through a trip
- お願いします (onegaishimasu) — "please" when requesting or ordering. Point and say it.
- いただきます / ごちそうさまでした — before and after eating.
- 大丈夫です (daijoubu desu) — "it's fine / no thanks". Extremely versatile, and the polite way to decline.
- わかりません (wakarimasen) — "I don't understand."
- 日本語が少しわかります — "I understand a little Japanese."
- もう一度お願いします — "one more time, please."
- 英語を話せますか — "do you speak English?"
- これをください — "this one, please."
- トイレはどこですか — "where is the toilet?"
The register trap
The biggest beginner mistake isn't pronunciation — it's register. Japanese encodes your relationship to the listener in the form of the words themselves, and using a casual form with a stranger, or stiff formal language with a friend, is noticeable in a way that a wrong vowel isn't.
The safe default for learners is the polite です/ます form. It's correct with strangers, staff, colleagues, and anyone older, and nobody is ever offended by it. Learn casual speech later, deliberately, once you can hear the difference — that ordering is deliberate, and this guide explains why.
The second trap is anime. Anime Japanese is dramatic, gendered, and often rough — great for listening practice, risky as a phrasebook.
Where to go from here
Phrases get you through a trip. They don't get you to understanding, because a memorized phrase can't be recombined — you can say これをください but not build a new sentence from it.
The step that turns phrases into language is vocabulary plus the grammar to connect it: a few hundred high-frequency words, the particles that glue them together, and verb conjugation basics. That's a few weeks of work, and it's the difference between reciting and speaking.
Cotobara is built for exactly that stage — the most useful words first, in JLPT and frequency order, each with a level-appropriate example sentence and natural-sounding audio so you hear the polite register the way it's actually spoken. And if you're still on kana, start here.
Start Cotobara for free — go from memorized phrases to sentences you build yourself.