Some background:
I (17m) work at a sushi restaurant as a sushi roller (a sushi chef without a formal culinary education). I’ve been working there for about a year and recently got an unofficial promotion which has me acting as head of the sushi bar. My boss, who is a native Japanese man, recently started calling me by my first name and then adding “san” to the end. This started about two months ago and went from an infrequent thing to being almost the only way he addresses me. There is only one other person that he does this with, a fellow sushi roller who acts as second in command to Mr. Bossman and has been working there for ten years. But even second in command gets it pretty infrequent. I looked up the meaning of the term and from what I gather it seems to be a sign of politeness?
I respect and adore my boss and want to show him that respect so I was wondering if I should add a Japanese suffix to his name and if so which one? Or could adding one be seen as maybe culturally insensitive and I should just go with Mr? Or, maybe, I’m totally wrong about the meaning of “san”.
2 comments
Last name + San is always safe. It’s not culturally insensitive at all. Quite the opposite. It’ll demonstrate an understanding and given that he’s already using it with you, I would say quite receptive to it. You may already know him by his last name, quite likely. You can’t go wrong with this at all.
But, if you want to demonstrate a little knowledge, for sushi chefs specifically, there is the term Itamae (板前) which is used specifically for them. Could be fun to test the water with that and see how it’s received. It would be completely normal in Japan, but would be a rarity (I would guess) for him to be called that outside of Japan. See how it goes!
If he’s the restaurant manager, and you are working, ‘tencho’ would be the typical thing to call him in a Japanese situation. Otherwise, lastname-san is always safe.