Keigo for Restaurant and Hotel Staff: Service Japanese You Can Use

Four lines that carry a whole shift

Watch any restaurant or hotel lobby in Japan for ten minutes and you will hear the same handful of lines again and again. They are already in correct keigo, they are short, and they cover the moments that happen to every guest: arriving, asking for something, waiting and settling in.

Adding mase to kudasai, as in omachi kudasaimase, is a softer, more hospitable version used mainly in service. It is natural from staff to guests and would sound odd in an office.

To a friend, a coworker and a guest

New staff often know polite Japanese already and wonder why it is not enough. The comparison below shows the gap. The plain polite version is correct and would be fine with a coworker, but to a guest it sounds like an office worker, not a host. Service keigo raises the guest with respectful forms and the honorific sama, and presents things with de gozaimasu.

A restaurant visit from the door to the change

This dialogue follows a guest pair through a small restaurant. The amounts are examples. Notice the counter mei with sama for people, the verb oazukari itashimasu for taking the guest's money, and okaeshi for the change; these three are the lines new staff most often get wrong at the register.

Checking a guest in at a hotel

Front-desk Japanese is a little more formal than restaurant Japanese, because guests stay longer and the desk handles money, rules and complaints. The structure is the same: welcome, confirm the booking with respectful verbs for the guest, give information with de gozaimasu and humble verbs for the hotel's own actions.

Saying no to a guest without saying no

Every shift brings a request you cannot meet: a full restaurant, a sold-out dish, a room change on a busy night. Service Japanese almost never says dekimasen bare. It opens with a cushion word, states the fact, and offers what you can do. If you need to fetch your manager, remember the uchi-soto rule: to a guest, your manager is tenchō or the manager's surname without san, and you use the humble mairimasu for fetching them.

Itashikanemasu, I am unable to do, is very formal and final. Use it for firm rules, and soften it with mōshiwake gozaimasen ga in front. For anything that might still be possible, say kakunin shite mairimasu and check first.

Manual keigo that many guests notice

Some phrases spread through restaurant and convenience-store manuals and are now heard everywhere. Linguists and etiquette guides often criticise them, and opinions differ on how wrong they really are. You will not be fired for saying them, but the safer forms make you sound more careful, and they are what most keigo textbooks teach.

Voice, bows and timing

• Speak a little higher and clearer than in conversation. Service lines are short, so the warmth is in the voice.
• Bow lightly on irasshaimase and more deeply on mōshiwake gozaimasen. Many workplaces teach their own angles; follow the training.
• Hand back change and receipts with both hands, and say the amount so the guest can check it.
• When you pass a guest in a corridor or between tables, a quiet shitsurei itashimasu is enough.
• Do not chat with coworkers in casual Japanese within the guests' hearing. Many managers notice this before any keigo error.

Run through a shift before your shift

Ask Mocchi to drill you on conversions: give me ten things a guest might hear in casual Japanese and make me turn each one into service keigo, then correct me. Mocchi checks every answer, explains which part was off, and picks up the ones you missed in your next /review.

Then rehearse with a voice on the other side. In AI Sensei, ask Hana-sensei to be a guest at your restaurant or hotel desk: someone who arrives without a booking, changes an order, asks for something you cannot provide and finally pays. Ask the Sensei to speak at real service speed once you are comfortable.