I need to phone someone in Japan (a martial arts teacher of mine) in the next couple of days and I’ve only done one phone call in Japanese before. It went mostly well, but I completely botched the ending, mostly because I didn’t know how to wind down the conversation and more or less had to suddenly blurt out “それでは失礼いたします” and wait to see if he stopped me. Fortunately my teacher knows my Japanese is still not very good, but it was still incredibly awkward and embarrassing for me and has me stressed out for the next call.
I have my list of things I need to talk to him about (passing on some news, asking him if he’s coming to visit this year), but I’m not sure how to basically say, politely, “That’s all I have to say,” and signal that I’m ready to end the conversation if he is (similar to how we would say in English, “OK, I think that’s all I had to tell you, so I’ll let you go now.”)
Any suggestions or pointers?
EDIT: Semi-related question – I invited him to come visit this year a few months ago and he accepted (provisional on the pandemic behaving itself), but there’s been some issues with his health since then, so I want to see if he’s still coming. Is 秋にカナダに先生はまだきますか？an appropriate way to ask that question or should I be using something else?
2 comments
A native speaker here. There are some typical phrases to politely wind down a phone conversation before saying, “（それ）では失礼いたします”, for example, “分かりました、ありがとうございます….こちらからは以上になります。（先生から）他に何かございますか？” or something like that.
About the semi-related question, if I were you, I would say something like, “前回お話しした秋にこちらに来ていただく件ですが、その後大丈夫でしょうか？先生のお体のこともありますのでご無理はしていただきたくないのですが…”, then as a reply to your teacher’s positive answer, “そうですか、ありがとうございます。楽しみにしています。ご予定が変わることがありましたらいつでもお知らせください。” That said, no offence, since your Japanese is not very good as you said, just saying, “先生は秋にこちらに来(こ) られますか？” would be acceptable.
そろそろ is good for this.