The phrase every dictionary gives up on, and the one you'll need on day one.

Open any phrasebook and よろしくyoroshiku ("favourably, well")お願いしますおねがいします (onegaishimasu · please, I request) gets a shrug of a translation: "Nice to meet you." Sometimes "Please treat me well." Sometimes the honest one — "(untranslatable)."

The dictionaries aren't being lazy. English genuinely has no phrase for this, because English doesn't do the thing this phrase does.

What it literally says

Broken apart, it's two pieces. Yoroshiku is an adverb meaning roughly "favourably" or "in a good way" — the word you add when you're asking someone to do you a good turn. Onegaishimasu is a humble request — I ask this of you.

So: "I ask that you treat this favourably." No subject, no object, no timeframe. Japanese is comfortable leaving all three out, and that vagueness is doing the work. It doesn't specify what you're asking for, because you're asking for all of it, in advance, forever.

That's why it slides into so many slots that look unrelated in English.

Where you'll actually hear it

  • Meeting someone. At the end of your self-introduction. This is the "nice to meet you" slot, and it's the one learners get taught.
  • Starting a job, a class, a project. On day one, to a whole room. You're not meeting them for the first time in the social sense — you're opening a working 関係かんけい (kankei · relationship).
  • After asking a favour. You've made the request; this closes it. "Could you check this by Friday? Yoroshiku onegaishimasu."
  • At the end of an email. Where English puts Best regards, Japanese business mail puts this — often as 何卒よろしくお願いいたします, the heavy formal version.
  • Handing your child to a teacher, your car to a mechanic, yourself to a barber. Anywhere you're placing something you care about into someone else's hands.

Notice the through-line. It isn't a greeting. It's what you say at the moment responsibility transfers.

Why English can't carry it

English splits this into pieces and loses the middle. Nice to meet you is about the present moment. Please attaches to one specific request. Thanks in advance is close, but it's transactional and, in some registers, faintly passive-aggressive.

Japanese is doing something else: acknowledging that you are about to be in someone's hands — the verb is 世話になるせわになる (sewa ni naru · to be in someone's care) — and asking them to be generous about it, before you know what you'll need. It's a pre-emptive request for goodwill.

It works because the relationship, not the transaction, is the unit. You're not asking for a favour. You're asking to be treated well across every unspecified favour to come.

What it commits you to

Here's the part that isn't in the phrasebook: it isn't free.

Saying yoroshiku onegaishimasu puts you inside a relationship where you now owe reciprocal goodwill. It's the verbal handshake on an ongoing obligation, and the person saying it back is agreeing to the same. The Japanese verb 頼むたのむ (tanomu · to ask a favour, to rely on) sits underneath it — a word that means both to ask and to rely on, which is not a coincidence.

This is why it can feel strangely heavy to say the first few times, and why saying it too casually to someone senior sounds off. It's also why the casual clipped form — just yoroshiku — is fine between friends but wrong on your first day at work, and why business Japanese climbs through お願いします → お願いいたします → お願い申し上げます as the person gets more senior. The shorter it gets, the less obligation it claims.

How to use it without overthinking

  • Use the full form when in doubt. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu is safe almost everywhere. Yoroshiku alone is friends-only.
  • Say it at the end, not the start. It closes an introduction or a request. Leading with it sounds like you skipped a step.
  • Bow slightly, once. Same as sumimasen — a nod, not a production.
  • You can say it back. When someone says it to you, kochira koso yoroshiku onegaishimasu ("likewise, and the same from my side") is the standard return.
  • Don't translate it in your head. Learners stall trying to pick which English meaning applies. Attach it to the situation — responsibility is transferring — and it stops being ambiguous.

The honest note

I'd like to say this is purely warm, but the same open-endedness that makes it graceful makes it useful for pressure.

A manager who ends an unreasonable request with yoroshiku onegaishimasu has made it socially expensive to say no — the phrase has already framed the thing as a relationship rather than a negotiation. Japanese workplaces run on a lot of requests that were never quite requests. The phrase is not the cause of that, but it's the grease.

Still, of all the words I'd want a visitor to leave with, this is near the top. Not because it's beautiful, but because it does something useful: it tells the other person you know you're about to be in their hands, and you're not taking it for granted. Most languages make you say that in a full sentence, if they let you say it at all.

Sources & further reading

Japanese-language sources — what Japanese readers read about this, not what's written for visitors.

I write Honne Japan — honest notes on Japanese living, the real thing behind the polite face. One small, un-aesthetic idea each week: Honne Japan on Substack →.