Ojama Shimasu: Disturbing Your Friends in a Polite Way

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Although we don’t visit others too often nowadays, we should prepare for when it becomes normal again. In Japanese there is a distinct term that is used when entering someone else’s home (or also office) – once you step inside, it is good to say ojama shimasu お邪魔します, which literally means ‘I am disturbing’. The kanji for jama 邪魔 mean ‘disturbance’ / ‘interruption’ and can be traced back to the original meaning of a demon that hinders Buddhist training. The ‘demon’ part can be detected in a radical of the kanji ma 魔: if you look closely, you will see the part ‘鬼’, which means devil (oni in Japanese), itself a separate kanji. When you visit someone, the host is probably busy doing something before you come, so you expect to disturb them. They might have been reading or cooking, but even if they were just waiting for you to come, it is polite to say it anyway.

Written by Jannick Scherrer