Japanese People Aren't Sorry

Japanese people say "sorry" all the time. In meetings. In emails. In restaurants. Even when they haven't done anything wrong. So why do Japanese people apologize so much? In this video, I break down the real meaning behind ごめんなさい and すみません, why they don't always mean "I'm sorry," and how understanding this can completely change the way you communicate in Japan. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📥 Get the free guide — 21 Business Japanese Phrases: → https://ryu-yamada.kit.com/f00f5583ae ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Many foreigners assume Japanese people are constantly apologizing. But in reality, these phrases often have very different meanings. In this video, I explain: • Why "I'm sorry" and ごめんなさい are not the same • The 3 real reasons Japanese people say すみません • Why すみません can actually mean "thank you" • The downside of apologizing too much • The one phrase that instantly makes you sound more natural in Japan ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 00:00 The apology email that confused me 01:09 Why do Japanese people apologize so much? 02:06 "Sorry" ≠ ごめんなさい 04:22 Reason 1: The cushion word（クッション言葉） 05:13 Reason 2: A hidden "thank you" 05:49 Reason 3: Protecting the atmosphere（空気を守る） 06:56 The downside of over-apologizing 08:50 The magic phrase: すみません、ありがとうございます 11:04 The bigger picture: 思いやり（omoiyari） 12:55 Subscribe + free PDF ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎯 FREE RESOURCE Download 21 practical business Japanese phrases you can start using right away: → https://ryu-yamada.kit.com/f00f5583ae ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📱 Instagram:   / its_ryu_yamada   📩 Contact: [email protected] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #WorkingInJapan #JapaneseCulture #JapaneseLanguage #LifeInJapan #JapaneseCommunication #BusinessJapanese #JapanLife #LearnJapanese #日本語 #日本文化