There’s an alternate timeline where my Japanese family moved to Brazil in the 70’s. When I learned this my mom told me Brazil is a very appealing place for Japanese people to immigrate, because of aligned values around agriculture and fishing. I haven’t formally studied the relationship between the two countries but “thank you” in Portuguese is “obrigado” and in Japanese it’s “arigato” and when I discovered this, I thought wow the cultural connection is so real. (Brazil is also home to the largest population of Japanese people / people of Japanese descent outside of Japan.)
I searched online and saw many other people asking about this association, but in reality they have completely different origins. “Obrigado” is derived from the Latin “obligātus” and, according to dictionary.com,
Arigato (ありがとう) comes from the words arigatashi (“to be”) and katai (“difficult”). Arigato, then, has a literal sense of “being alive is hard.”
Arigato became used to express gratitude (in appreciation of goodness despite life’s challenges), eventually morphing into a more general expression of thanks over time.
Every time I say obrigado my brain thinks I’m speaking Japanese and I find myself saying hai, daijoubu, ii desu, etc. Yes, it’s okay, I’m good.
The weather was mostly grey during our 48 hours in Copacabana but it was still a dream. Now we’re in Búzios (where our friends are getting married) and yes I will be posting a video about it next week. Like and subscribe!!!