So I have mentioned previously that I visited Osaka for a few days at the tail end of the extended vacation I took back immediately after my teaching gig was over and done with. One of the things I did while I was in Osaka was attend Punkfest ‘09, a two-day concert featuring a number of prominent American alternative bands—Bad Religion, Less Than Jake, NOFX, Mindless Self Indulgence, Rise Against, and then some others I didn’t care about—and even a few totally swee Japanese ones—most notably Oreskaband, who put on what may be the best live show I have ever seen, ever.
It was interesting to observe the way the American bands carried themselves in front of a foreign audience. In more than a few cases the bands kind of acted like dicks: antagonizing people in the crowd, American-style swagger and grandstanding, excessive and asinine onstage banter along the lines of “we should really stop doing so much onstage banter because no one here can understand what we’re saying tee hee,” that kind of stuff. NOFX were especially bad, and even threw in a few jokes about kamikazes and atom bombs, which I guess isn’t that surprising. Bad Religion, Rise Against, and Madina Lake (who I’d never heard of before) were all pretty cool and played the part of gracious guests. That spoke well of them; the Japanese like humility.
Anyways, one thing I did notice was that the lead singers from almost all of the American acts at Punkspring began their sets with the phrase “Doumo arigatou Osaka!” I guess most people in the United States think “doumo arigatou” is how to say “thank you” in Japanese; I know that’s what I thought back before my stint as an ALT. But this was a strange phrase to hear after seven months in Japan, because that’s not actually how people say “thank you” in Japan.
In English, the standard terms for thanking people are modular. We start with the mother of them all, the phrase “thank you very much,” which we use when we feel strong gratitude. When we feel a smaller amount of gratitude we say “thank you” or “thanks” as a more formal, less emphatic form of expressing what is essentially the same sentiment.
Japanese is the same way. You start with the base phrase “doumo arigatou gozaimasu,” which is equivalent to “thank you very much.” For more informal situations—your server brings you your food, for example, or one of your students tells you they like your tie—you say “arigatou gozaimasu,” which is the most commonly used “thank you” phrase in day-to-day life. “Doumo” or “arigatou” can be used by themselves as even less formal substitutes if you are cultivating an air of jaded detachment, but you will never, ever hear a Japanese person use the phrase “doumo arigatou.” That just doesn’t happen. I admit that I do not know enough about the etymology of the Japanese language to explain what each of these words mean on their own: like many phrases I learned in Japan, I know when to use them but not exactly what they mean. My understanding, though, is that saying “domo arigatou” is along the same lines as an English-speaker saying “Thank you very.” Yeah, I know Styx sang that one song with the line “Doumo arigatou Mr. Roboto,” but it’s never a good idea to base your knowledge of the world on shitty corporate rock from the 1970’s.
As a final aside, it’s worth noting that after Mindless Self Indulgence’s set, the drummer—a somewhat-chubby woman with pigtails—grabbed the microphone from the lead singer and said, “Doumo arigatou gozaimashita!” which not only is the correct phrasing but is even in the past tense to indicate that she is thanking them for being a good audience. I was impressed, especially since MSI was arguably the least cerebral of all the bands playing that day.
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