Learn Japanese Today

When I was in the Japan the first time, with my high school Japanese class, it was something of a tradition that my good friend Alex and I would go around the entire school we were visiting and say お疲れ様 (otsukaresama) to everyone we ran into. It was just a word we had learned to say at the end of the day, and I assumed it was just some sort of informal greeting like “Hey man!” or “What’s up?”

This erroneous line of thinking led me to say “otsukaresama” to my sensei and all my classmates at the start of our first Japanese class back from Japan. My sensei’s response was “ええぇ、ちょっと。。。”　meaning I had made a mistake. So to keep you guys from making similar mistakes, here’s what otsukaresama really means.

The literal translation of otsukaresama is something along the lines of “you must be tired,” but it carries with it the implied meaning of “…after working so hard.” It’s essentially the equivalent to the English “nice work.” It’s something you say to a classmate, co-worker, or teammate after a hard day of school/work/sports. Also, in a formal or workplace environment, you should probably add “desu” being a more formal way of saying “good work” or “deshita” a more formal way to say “you did good work today.” In informal situations, otsukaresama or just otsukare  can mean either past or present tense. Give it a try!

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