long post, tldr at bottom
This was from a few weeks ago but I just watched a video which reminded me of it. So as it turns out to my previous complete ignorance, Japanese people don’t say “how are you?” when greeting each other. At least, not most of the time. The much touted “お元気ですか” is often claimed to be the go-to follow-up to こんにちは in beginner textbooks, and for about 6 years, I earnestly believed that was what you should say when greeting a friend or acquaintance. Even despite the fact that in my 2 years of living in Japan, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it used in that context.
I work as an English teacher and quite often I get the same bus as another teacher so we’ll talk on our commute, and usually they like to greet me in English to practice what little English they know. So we’ll usually have a normal English greeting where we ask how each other is and such. Well sometimes we’d greet each other in Japanese, and so I’d want to ask them how they were in Japanese, so what do I go with? Well, お元気ですか of course. It doesn’t allow for the same range of responses that “how are you?” does, but it’d seem rude not to see if they’re doing alright, right?
Well, as it turns out, nope. Not at all. In fact, after about 2 years of bus greetings, the teacher finally worked up the courage to correct me. They said something to the effect of: “you know, Japanese people don’t actually greet each other by saying お元気ですか, right? We usually just say hello, unless we’re actually checking in with the other person”. Well, I was both shocked and not surprised at all. It made complete sense. After all, I’d never actually heard Japanese people greeting each other in that way so why didn’t I question it earlier? I never stopped to think that this aspect of Japanese and Japanese culture would be different because I regarded it as such a core part of communication. You greet, you see how each other are, you talk about things that have happened, etc. It’s just part of the flow of human interaction. Or at least, so I thought. Like word order it’s a purely subjective thing and it’s just one of the many ways that the language(s) we speak influence how we think. I feel like I should have known this sooner, but, going off this recent thread, I’m glad I was able to be corrected on it.
tldr: Apparently お元気ですか isn’t used how textbooks teach it because Japanese people don’t ask “how are you” usually