Moving - How to greet new neighbours?

Can anyone advise me of suitable key Japanese phrases (and behaviour) to use if (a) I move to new accommodation and want to introduce myself to my immediate neighbours, and (b) vice-versa - if new neighbours call at my door to introduce themselves?

If someone could lay out in dialogue form how such a brief exchange should go, that would be even more helpful.
Thanks!

It's usually polite to bring a small useful gift (cookies or fruits, something like that) and introduce yourself to the people next door to you--also to the landlord. Just say who you are and maybe where you came from and say, "Yoroshiku onegai shimasu." And most importantly be aware of any neighborhood rules, especially about garbage collection.

As Natsuki suggested, in Japan, you are the one who is suppposed to show up at their doors to introduce yourself, not the other way around.

Typically, if you live in a house and not an apartment, you should visit the two immediate neighbors living in both sides of your house, and the three neighbors living across the street. It would even be better if you visit the house at the back of your house.

If you live in an apartment, visit the _rooms_ similarly (you don't have to go across the street from your building to visit others but just across your corridor), and be sure to visit the people living immediately downstairs from you. You might want to visit the people immediately upstairs as well.

Ring the bell, introduce yourself, hand the gift, bow and go home. You don't need to go in, and they will probably not invite you anyway. It would be a simple greeting with little burden. Gifts should typically be worth 500 to 1000 yen each, and a lot of people choose things like hand towels or sweets. Just say something like "(place of your home) ni hikkoshitekita (name) desu. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu." This means, "I am (name) who moved into (place of your home)." If you write your name on the gift, it might encourage your neighbors to remember it. If you live with others, go together. If your neighbors are not home, leave a note of greeting.

Hope you have a nice stay here!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8dXBckmxx0

Lesson 2 begins at 0:55

Not exactly the best or completely accurate, but you still get the idea!

If you want to be really formal you can do that.

I talked to Japanese people I know here, many of them say they didn't introduce themselves (have other people introduce themselves) or even know who their neighbors are.

I don't know maybe thats because I'm in Tokyo or something.

I think young people who live alone tend to skip the introduction. I hear that a lot of them don't even say hello when you see people in the same building.

But it's safer to introduce yourself and remember the faces of each other. Not only can you avoid crime, but mostly, people tend to get annoyed when you don't really know who the other party really is. But if you know about that person, a little bit of noise or disturbance can be tolerated between each other.

Up to you.

Thanks for the replies and advice, everyone. I should say that I'm already in Japan, and speak passable (just...) Japanese. It's just that this is one situation I never learned to do well, and recently new neighbours knocked on my door to intro themselves. I felt that after the usual mutual'yoroshiku onegaishimasu' we were in danger of going around in circles, wondering how to end the short communication. I wished I could have known what signals I should be giving to show 'ok, that's about it, right?'.

In my country, we'd probably spend a few minutes in small talk about who you are, your job, family, ended with a 'Well, anyway, I must be off'. All designed to really make the first move towards getting to know each other.

Here, I think that's not the done thing. It's more a ritual to get through, rather than a wish to make pals and get to know each other, since most never speak again after this point!

Is it really enough, then, to give name, country, then yoroshiku onegaishimasu? Just seems so cold..

Well, I think that a lot of younger Japanese people tend to be shy and they sort of make it as quick as possible. So yes, just your name and a smile would be fine, and the other party would think, "Well, that was a polite girl to have greeted us so patiently."

But if you are at a more responsible age, as suggested, a typical greeting should include asking whether there are rules you need to keep in mind such as things about garbage. If you have already lived there for some time, you can ask the typical, "gomeiwaku o okakeshite imasenka?" as a courtesy pose to make sure you're not annoying anyone. Also typically, people might find this as a good chance to ask about the neighborhood in a "oh, by the way, I have been wondering" tone. About shopping or doctors etc.

Actually, the idea is supposed to be that you want to make it quick, because you know that the person needs to go to greet other neighbors and you don't want to let the person just standing out there in the cold whether. But it's not that there is no friendship to follow. Typically, if you meet each other in the elevator you might talk about the weather, and if one of you are with a small child you might try to be nice and chat with the kid, and if you feel you have something mutual you might try to talk about that. The idea is that if you have done the greeting, it's easier to say, "Oh hi, you are that person from the other day."

However, you have to admit that if the other party is young and single, or even foreign for that matter, it's hard to find a theme you can chat about. You don't know their hobbies, you don't know their occupation, you don't know what kind of family they have back home, and mostly locals tend to think that young people don't like to talk. So it would be encouraging if the younger person or the foreign person starts the small talk. For example, a lot of people tend to ask where they lived before moving in. That would be an easy conversation.

It's true that conversations tend to go round and round once you start doing that rotation. The trick is to not repeat what you've already said, and the other trick is to just shut up. People want to look polite, so they don't want to be the first one to end the conversation:)

Uco as lots of great info as usual.. Thanks Uco! when I moved from Europe to North America I first rented a small suite in a private house. The landlady was old, very prim and proper, and she taught me a lot about local customs. Later on I moved into apartment buildings, where people did their best to ignore one another... This was familiar to me as in Europe---in big cities-- we did the same. In my birth town we even had a joke about that: a mother visit her grown up son and his family and mention that she ran into someone in the hallway. Must be the new neighbour say the son. We don't know much about her yet, she only moved recently. Ah yes say the daughter in law, barely 20 years ago. .