Business Japanese Conversation Practice (2026 Guide)

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Here's the honest starting point: です・ます is not "polite enough" at a Japanese workplace — it is the floor, not the standard. Above it sits 敬語 (keigo), which splits into three layers that point in different directions, and below the grammar sits a set of cultural rules that decide what you are allowed to say at all. This guide covers both: the keigo you need with readings and English, the exact lines for self-introductions, phone calls, meetings, apologies and reporting, the mistakes that cause real offence, and a practice plan that gets these into your mouth before the moment arrives.

In this guide: why desu-masu isn't enough · keigo in one page · self-introduction · the phone · meetings · email to speech · apologising · ho-ren-so · cheat sheet · cultural rules · office vs factory · how to practise

Why desu-masu is not enough at work

Textbook Japanese teaches one politeness dial: plain form for friends, です・ます for everyone else. Workplaces run on a second dial that textbooks barely touch, and it turns on a distinction called 内・外 (uchi-soto, inside-outside).

Everyone you speak about belongs to one of two groups. Your company, your team, your boss are inside. Clients, other companies, visitors are outside. Japanese changes verb forms depending on which side someone is on — and the rule that surprises every learner is that you humble your own boss when speaking to an outsider.

So when a client calls asking for your manager, Mr Tanaka:

• ❌ 田中さんはいらっしゃいません。 — Tanaka-san wa irasshaimasen. Honorific verb and さん for your own side. This sounds arrogant to the caller.
• ✅ 田中はただいま席を外しております。 — Tanaka wa tadaima seki o hazushite orimasu. No さん, humble verb. "Tanaka has stepped away from his desk."

Inside the office, with the same person present, 田中さん or 田中部長 is completely correct. Nothing about your respect changed — the audience did.

This is why business Japanese cannot be learned as vocabulary. Every sentence requires two decisions before you open your mouth: whose action is this? and who am I saying it to?

Keigo in one page: sonkeigo, kenjougo, teineigo

Three layers, three jobs:

• 尊敬語 (sonkeigo, respectful) — raises the other person's actions. Never use it about yourself.
• 謙譲語 (kenjōgo, humble) — lowers your own actions in relation to the listener. Never use it about them.
• 丁寧語 (teineigo, polite) — the neutral です・ます layer that makes any sentence acceptable.

Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs (文化庁) refined this into five categories in its 2007 keigo guidelines, splitting humble language in two and adding 美化語 (beautification, the お/ご on お茶 and ご飯). For daily use, the three-way split above carries you.

The high-frequency verbs are irregular and simply have to be memorised. These are the ones that come up daily:

For every other verb, two patterns cover you:

• Respectful: お＋ます-stem＋になる — 読む → お読みになる o-yomi ni naru. (The lighter passive form 読まれる yomareru also works and is common with colleagues.)
• Humble: お＋ます-stem＋する — 送る → お送りします o-okuri shimasu; 持つ → お持ちします o-mochi shimasu.

The three errors that mark you out:

1. Direction reversal. 資料を拝見されましたか — humble verb applied to the listener's action. Say ご覧になりましたか.
2. Double keigo (二重敬語). おっしゃられる and ご覧になられる stack two honorifics on one verb; おっしゃる and ご覧になる are already complete. (One historical exception: お伺いします is technically doubled but is explicitly accepted as established usage.)
3. Over-using 〜させていただきます. Sasete itadakimasu means "I humbly receive permission to…". It is correct when permission genuinely exists (資料を送らせていただきます) and grating when it doesn't. Plain いたします is often the better sentence.

Self-introduction: your first thirty seconds

The order is fixed and non-negotiable: company → department → name, and you close with よろしくお願いいたします.

Meeting an external contact:

はじめまして。ABC株式会社、営業部の田中と申します。よろしくお願いいたします。 Hajimemashite. ABC kabushiki-gaisha, eigyōbu no Tanaka to mōshimasu. Yoroshiku onegai itashimasu. "How do you do. I'm Tanaka from the sales department at ABC Corporation. I look forward to working with you."

申します is the humble form of 言う — you never say 私の名前は田中です in business. When you receive a business card, take it with both hands and say 頂戴いたします (chōdai itashimasu, "I gratefully receive it").

First day at a new company, to your team:

本日から営業部でお世話になります、田中と申します。前職では法人営業を担当しておりました。一日も早く戦力になれるよう努めてまいります。ご指導のほどよろしくお願いいたします。 Honjitsu kara eigyōbu de osewa ni narimasu, Tanaka to mōshimasu. Zenshoku de wa hōjin eigyō o tantō shite orimashita. Ichinichi mo hayaku senryoku ni nareru yō tsutomete mairimasu. Go-shidō no hodo yoroshiku onegai itashimasu. "I'm Tanaka, joining the sales department from today. In my previous role I handled corporate sales. I'll do my best to become a contributing member as soon as possible. I'd be grateful for your guidance."

Note 担当しておりました rather than 担当していました — おる is the humble form of いる, and it is the default when you describe your own history to a group that includes seniors. 努めてまいります uses 参る the same way.

Answering the phone

The phone is the highest-stakes ninety seconds in a Japanese office: no facial expressions, no time to think, and you are representing the whole company. It is also completely scriptable, which makes it the best thing to rehearse first.

Picking up an external call (aim for within three rings):

お電話ありがとうございます。ABC株式会社でございます。 O-denwa arigatō gozaimasu. ABC kabushiki-gaisha de gozaimasu.

Never もしもし — it is fine between friends and reads as unprofessional at work. If they answer late, the convention is お待たせいたしました (omatase itashimashita, "sorry to have kept you waiting").

When they identify themselves:

いつもお世話になっております。 Itsumo osewa ni natte orimasu. — the universal business greeting to anyone outside your company.

Asking someone to repeat:

恐れ入りますが、もう一度お名前を伺ってもよろしいでしょうか。 Osore irimasu ga, mō ichido o-namae o ukagatte mo yoroshii deshō ka.

If the line is genuinely bad, Japanese business etiquette blames the connection rather than the caller: お電話が遠いようですので (o-denwa ga tōi yō desu node, "the line seems faint"). Nobody is at fault, and nobody loses face.

Transferring, and when the person is out:

少々お待ちいただけますか。 — Shōshō omachi itadakemasu ka. ("One moment please.") 申し訳ございません。あいにく田中は席を外しております。戻り次第、こちらからご連絡いたしましょうか。 Mōshiwake gozaimasen. Ainiku Tanaka wa seki o hazushite orimasu. Modori shidai, kochira kara go-renraku itashimashō ka. "I'm sorry — Tanaka is away from his desk at the moment. Shall we call you back as soon as he returns?"

Taking a message. Read the details back. This is expected, not fussy:

復唱いたします。〇〇の件で、090-1234-5678、田中様でいらっしゃいますね。 Fukushō itashimasu. …no ken de, …, Tanaka-sama de irasshaimasu ne.

And close with かしこまりました (kashikomarimashita) or 承知いたしました (shōchi itashimashita) rather than 了解です, which is widely treated as too casual to use upward.

Meetings: opinions, agreement and polite disagreement

Japanese meetings reward people who signal before they speak. Cutting straight into your point reads as abrupt even when the point is good.

Opening a contribution:

一点、よろしいでしょうか。 — Itten, yoroshii deshō ka. ("May I raise one point?") 確認させていただいてもよろしいでしょうか。 — Kakunin sasete itadaite mo yoroshii deshō ka. ("May I check something?")

Giving an opinion:

私といたしましては、〜と考えております。 — Watakushi to itashimashite wa, …to kangaete orimasu. ("For my part, I believe that…") 〜という認識で間違いないでしょうか。 — …to iu ninshiki de machigai nai deshō ka. ("Is my understanding correct?")

考えております is softer and more workplace-appropriate than 思います, which is fine but flatter.

Agreeing:

おっしゃるとおりです。 — Ossharu tōri desu. ("It's exactly as you say.") 承知いたしました。 — Shōchi itashimashita. ("Understood.")

Disagreeing without confrontation. The pattern is acknowledge → soften → raise a concern as a question, never a flat 違います:

おっしゃることはごもっともです。一方で、コストの面で懸念がございます。 Ossharu koto wa gomottomo desu. Ippō de, kosuto no men de kenen ga gozaimasu. "What you say is entirely reasonable. On the other hand, I have a concern on the cost side."

差し出がましいようですが、別の見方をいたしますと〜 Sashidegamashii yō desu ga, betsu no mikata o itashimasu to… "If I may be so bold, looking at it another way…"

Buying yourself time is legitimate and expected: 恐れ入ります、少し整理させてください (Osore irimasu, sukoshi seiri sasete kudasai, "Excuse me — let me organise my thoughts").

From email to speech: which phrases cross over

Business Japanese has a written register that learners absorb from email templates and then accidentally say out loud, where it sounds like a robot reading a form.

Safe in both: お世話になっております · よろしくお願いいたします · 承知いたしました · ご確認をお願いいたします (go-kakunin o onegai itashimasu) · 恐れ入りますが.

Written only — do not say these: 取り急ぎ (toriisogi, "in haste") · ご査収ください (go-sashū kudasai, "please check and accept the attached") · 何卒 (nanitozo) in casual speech · 拝啓／敬具 (letter openers and closers).

The handoff line you actually need — referring in conversation to something you already sent:

先ほどメールでお送りした〇〇の件ですが、少しお時間よろしいでしょうか。 Sakihodo mēru de o-okuri shita …no ken desu ga, sukoshi o-jikan yoroshii deshō ka. "About the matter I emailed you earlier — do you have a moment?"

メールでもお送りしておりますが、念のため口頭でもご報告いたします。 Mēru de mo o-okuri shite orimasu ga, nen no tame kōtō de mo go-hōkoku itashimasu. "I've sent it by email as well, but I'll report it verbally just to be sure."

One more crossover trap: お疲れ様です is the internal greeting (colleagues, any direction), while お世話になっております is the external one (clients, suppliers). ご苦労様です flows downward only — a manager may say it to staff; saying it to your boss is a genuine error.

Apologising and escalating

Japanese apologies are graded, and using the wrong grade is itself a mistake — under-apologising reads as careless, wildly over-apologising for a trivial slip reads as odd.

ごめんなさい is warm and childlike — keep it out of the office entirely.

The sequencing rule matters as much as the phrase. Apologise first, explain second. Leading with the reason reads as excuse-making (言い訳, iiwake), even when the reason is good:

ご迷惑をおかけして申し訳ございません。原因を確認のうえ、本日中にご報告いたします。 Go-meiwaku o okake shite mōshiwake gozaimasen. Gen'in o kakunin no ue, honjitsu-chū ni go-hōkoku itashimasu. "I'm very sorry for the trouble caused. I'll confirm the cause and report back to you today."

Escalating — when a decision is above your level, saying so is correct, not weak. To an outsider your boss becomes 上の者 (ue no mono, "someone above me"), never 部長の田中さん:

私では判断いたしかねますので、上の者に確認のうえ、改めてご連絡いたします。 Watakushi de wa handan itashikanemasu node, ue no mono ni kakunin no ue, aratamete go-renraku itashimasu. "I'm not in a position to decide this, so I'll check with my superior and get back to you."

〜かねます is the standard business way to say "I can't" without the bluntness of できません.

Ho-ren-so: reporting the way Japanese teams expect

報連相 (hō-ren-sō) is three words compressed into one workplace habit — and a pun on ほうれん草, spinach. It was popularised in 1980s Japan and is still taught in new-graduate training at most companies:

• 報告 (hōkoku) — report. Tell your manager what happened, especially bad news, early.
• 連絡 (renraku) — inform. Share facts sideways with everyone affected.
• 相談 (sōdan) — consult. Ask before deciding alone.

Foreign staff most often trip on the same instinct: solving the problem quietly and reporting once it is fixed. In many Western workplaces that is initiative. In a hō-ren-sō culture it is a gap — your manager was unable to intervene, and the silence itself is the failure.

The lines:

〇〇の件、ご報告いたします。結論から申し上げますと、納期が三日遅れる見込みです。 …no ken, go-hōkoku itashimasu. Ketsuron kara mōshiagemasu to, nōki ga mikka okureru mikomi desu. "Reporting on X. To give you the conclusion first, delivery is expected to slip by three days."

Conclusion first is the expected structure, not a stylistic preference. Burying the outcome at the end of a chronological story is a common complaint about non-native reporting.

念のためご連絡いたします。 — Nen no tame go-renraku itashimasu. ("Just letting you know, for safety's sake.") ご相談したいことがあるのですが、今お時間よろしいでしょうか。 Go-sōdan shitai koto ga aru no desu ga, ima o-jikan yoroshii deshō ka. ("There's something I'd like to consult you about — do you have a moment?")

The situation cheat sheet

Cultural rules that change how you speak

Grammar is the smaller half. These four norms decide whether correct Japanese also lands correctly.

Refusal is indirect. Direct no is avoided because it makes the other person lose face. Learn to hear these as declines:

• ちょっと難しいですね — chotto muzukashii desu ne, "that's a little difficult" = no.
• 検討させていただきます — kentō sasete itadakimasu, "we'll consider it" = usually no.
• 前向きに検討します — maemuki ni kentō shimasu, "we'll consider it positively" = still often no.

And when you need to decline: 申し訳ございませんが、今回は見送らせていただきます (Mōshiwake gozaimasen ga, konkai wa miokurasete itadakimasu, "I'm sorry, but we'll pass on this occasion").

Cushion phrases (クッション言葉) go in front of every request. They are not decoration; a bare request sounds abrupt:

• 恐れ入りますが osore irimasu ga — "I'm much obliged, but…"
• お手数ですが otesū desu ga — "sorry for the trouble, but…"
• 差し支えなければ sashitsukae nakereba — "if it's not inconvenient…"
• あいにくですが ainiku desu ga — "unfortunately…"
• 大変恐縮ですが taihen kyōshuku desu ga — "I'm terribly sorry to ask, but…"

Aizuchi (相槌) are mandatory, not optional. Japanese listeners backchannel far more often than English speakers do — はい, ええ, そうですね, さようでございますか on a formal call. On the phone especially, silence is read as "the line dropped" or "you aren't listening". Two cautions: うん is plain form and does not belong at work, and なるほど used repeatedly at a senior can read as though you are assessing their point rather than receiving it.

Silence and 間 (ma) are content. A pause after a proposal is thinking time, not an invitation to fill the gap. Rushing in to re-explain is a common foreign-staff habit that reads as pressure.

Office vs factory floor: SSW workers need different Japanese

The phrase "business Japanese" hides two very different jobs.

Office and customer-facing roles need everything above: the full 尊敬語 / 謙譲語 range, phone handling, meeting language, client email register. This is where a wrong honorific has real consequences.

Factory, construction, care and food-service roles — including much of the 特定技能 (tokutei ginō, Specified Skilled Worker) route — need something narrower but faster. What decides your first months on a 工場 floor:

• A compact fixed-phrase kit: お疲れ様です · おはようございます · すみません、もう一度お願いします · 分かりました／分かりません (say the second one clearly — nodding when you have not understood is the single most dangerous habit) · 〜てもいいですか · ちょっといいですか to flag a problem.
• Instant comprehension of spoken instructions in a noisy room, including numbers, times, counters and quantities.
• Safety vocabulary: 危ない abunai · 気をつけて ki o tsukete · 止めてください tomete kudasai · けがをしました kega o shimashita.
• Immediate reporting: 機械が止まりました kikai ga tomarimashita · 不良品が出ました furyōhin ga demashita. Ho-ren-sō applies here just as strongly, and on a production line the cost of silence is higher.

Deep keigo is a later project for these roles — worth building once you move toward supervisory or customer-facing work. If you are on the SSW route, the test side is covered separately in our JFT-Basic 2026 guide; note that neither the JFT-Basic nor the JLPT includes a live speaking section, so spoken readiness is entirely on you to build. The Japan Foundation, which runs the JFT-Basic, also publishes the free Irodori materials, which are built around exactly these everyday and workplace situations.

How to practise before you need it

Business Japanese failure is almost never a knowledge failure. You know 申し訳ございません. At 9:04am with a client on the line you say すみません, because knowledge you have only read has never been retrieved under pressure.

The fix is rehearsal, out loud, before the moment:

1. List your five recurring situations. Not "business Japanese" — the actual five: answering the phone, the Monday stand-up report, asking your manager for a decision, apologising for a delay, greeting a visitor.
2. Write three to five lines for each, using this guide as the source. Keep them short enough to say in one breath.
3. Say each line aloud ten times — not read, said, at full voice, until it comes out without assembly.
4. Then break the script. Have someone ask an unexpected follow-up so you have to produce a line you did not prepare. This is the step almost everyone skips, and it is the one that decides whether the phrases survive contact with a real conversation.
5. Get the politeness level corrected, not just the grammar. Wrong keigo is rarely ungrammatical — it is grammatical and pointed the wrong way, which is exactly what a spell-checker and a self-study routine cannot catch.

Steps 4 and 5 are where SoraSpeak is useful: you speak out loud to an AI Japanese teacher, the conversation is unscripted rather than a fixed script, and corrections cover particles, conjugation and politeness level with a plain-English explanation of why — including when you have used a humble form for someone else's action. There is a free daily tier and it runs in the browser. Honestly: it is a new product and Japanese-only by design, so try a session and judge it yourself. If you would rather build the habit solo first, our guides to practising Japanese speaking alone and Japanese shadowing cover the no-partner methods, and the apps comparison covers tutors and exchanges when you want a human.

The bottom line

Business Japanese is two skills wearing one name. The first is keigo mechanics: know which direction each form points, memorise the dozen irregular verbs, and never apply a humble form to someone else's action. The second is cultural: uchi and soto decide your verb, refusals arrive wrapped in ちょっと難しいですね, requests need a cushion in front of them, and silence on your end of a phone call reads as absence.

Both are learnable in weeks. Neither is usable until you have said them out loud enough times that they arrive without thinking — which is the only part of this guide that reading it cannot do for you.

🗣️ Rehearse the phone call, the apology and the report out loud — before the day you need them. Start practising Japanese conversation free →

SoraSpeak is an independent Japanese speaking-practice app. Workplace language norms vary by company and industry — treat these as general guidance.

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