“Oh no, I’m so sorry—I’m in the way.”
These are words you’ll hear in Japan more than “hello” or “thank you.” We whisper them as we slide slightly to the left on a crowded sidewalk. We mutter them while bending to pick up something we dropped in a supermarket aisle. We even bow apologetically when standing still—because merely existing in someone’s potential path is enough to feel like a social offense.
For many foreigners, this compulsive need not to be a bother is baffling. “Why are Japanese people always apologizing for being alive?” a Canadian friend once asked me after witnessing a man in a train station bow deeply just for brushing someone’s umbrella. She wasn’t being unkind—just genuinely confused.
But this goes beyond politeness. It’s not just etiquette. It’s a national anxiety—an ingrained, almost sacred fear of being meiwaku: a nuisance, a disturbance, an inconvenience to others.
And once you start noticing it, you can’t unsee it.
A Childhood of Apologizing
I grew up in Saitama, a quiet suburb north of Tokyo. Even as a child, I was taught that the worst thing I could do wasn’t lying, or fighting, or even skipping cram school. No, the ultimate sin was “meiwaku o kakeru”—causing trouble for others.
At school, we lined up in perfect silence. On field trips, our teachers would bark, “Don’t be a bother to the locals!” before releasing us into museums like tiny, rule-abiding ninjas. Even now, I remember the crushing guilt of accidentally knocking over a row of shoes in the school entrance area and hearing my homeroom teacher sigh, “Joe… don’t be in the way.”
It sticks with you. You grow up believing that the highest form of goodness is to take up as little space as possible.
Spatial Awareness as a Moral Compass
Being “in the way” in Japan isn’t about physical obstruction—it’s a moral state. You can be in the way with your noise, your body, your emotions, even your happiness, if it draws too much attention.
Stand on the wrong side of the escalator (left in Tokyo, right in Osaka) and you’ll get passive-aggressively bumped by an army of silent commuters. Speak too loudly on the train and you’ll receive dagger-like stares so sharp they might as well be actual daggers. Don’t separate your trash properly, and the entire neighborhood might collectively panic on garbage day.
This isn’t just social pressure—it’s an unspoken consensus, a quiet pact we’ve all signed: “I won’t disturb you, if you won’t disturb me.”
I once watched a woman apologize five times to five different people as she struggled to lift her baby stroller down a flight of stairs. Not a single person offered to help—probably because doing so might also cause “meiwaku.” Instead, they all politely sidestepped her, each mouthing, “Sumimasen… I’m in the way.”
The Virtue of Invisibility
To be truly Japanese is to master the art of not being noticed. We bow instead of wave. We whisper our thanks. We wait silently in line, even when the wait is outrageously long. And we train ourselves to move through the world like shadows—present but nonintrusive.
I remember visiting New York for the first time and being overwhelmed by how visible everyone was. People laughed loudly, danced on subway platforms, and argued with baristas about the temperature of their coffee. It was thrilling. And terrifying. I felt like I was watching a world where no one feared being “in the way.”
But I also felt envious. In Japan, expressing yourself so openly can feel like violating the peace. There’s something liberating about not caring whether you’re slightly blocking someone’s view of the toothpaste aisle.
A Culture of Anticipation
The Japanese obsession with not being a burden isn’t just about manners—it’s about anticipating others’ needs, sometimes before they even realize them.
That’s why convenience store clerks always ask if you want your hot and cold items bagged separately. It’s why train conductors bow before leaving the platform. It’s why your Japanese Airbnb host might send you a 17-paragraph message about how to operate the toilet.
It all stems from the same impulse: to prevent trouble before it starts. To preemptively erase any possibility of being “in the way.”
Of course, this can go too far. A friend once told me how her Japanese boyfriend broke up with her not because he stopped loving her, but because he felt like he might one day become a burden. He disappeared with an apologetic text: “You deserve someone less in the way.”
Reader, she did not take it well.
The Hidden Toll
All this sensitivity and hyper-awareness creates a peaceful public life—but it also creates stress. A lot of it.
Japanese people are famously polite and quiet in public, but behind that serenity lies a tightly wound inner monologue: Am I too slow? Am I standing wrong? Is my umbrella dripping on someone’s shoes?
Even something as mundane as boarding a train becomes a performance of courtesy. You stand in line, angle your bag not to touch anyone, and if someone brushes you—it’s your fault, obviously. Apologize. Bow. Shrink.
It’s exhausting. You begin to crave the luxury of oblivion—the kind Westerners seem to enjoy when they saunter through crosswalks mid-text, unbothered and unrepentant.
But Also… There’s Something Beautiful About It
And yet, for all its neuroses, there’s a strange beauty in this collective concern.
There’s a quiet poetry in a culture where people instinctively move to the side to let others pass, where commuters sleep upright so as not to lean on a stranger’s shoulder, where strangers apologize to vending machines they bump into at night.
Yes, it’s a little ridiculous. But it’s also… kind.
It creates a world where you feel taken care of—even if no one talks to you. Where trains run on time not because of efficiency alone, but because everyone agrees that being late would cause “meiwaku.” Where silence is a form of empathy, not indifference.
The Freedom to Be in the Way
Living in Japan means constantly calibrating yourself against others—trying not to inconvenience, offend, or disrupt. It’s a delicate dance of presence and absence, of being visible enough to function but invisible enough not to disturb.
But sometimes, I wonder what it would feel like to just be. To stop mid-sidewalk and stretch my arms without worrying. To laugh too loud. To forget, for a moment, that I’m always potentially in the way.
And yet, I also know that when I go abroad and someone loudly FaceTimes in a café, or pushes past me in a crowded store, part of me recoils. I miss the mutual awareness, the shared choreography.
Maybe the truth is this: freedom and courtesy are always in tension. Japan leans hard toward the latter. And while that comes with stress, it also creates something rare—an entire society built on consideration, however excessive it may seem.
So the next time you visit Japan and someone whispers, “Sorry—I’m in the way,” know this: they’re not just apologizing for themselves. They’re honoring a quiet code.
Just smile, bow slightly, and whisper back, “No worries. I’ll be in the way next time.”
