I recently joined a guild on an Asian server, where the leader sends me a daily dm like “今日もよろしくお願いします!” When I’m online at the same time, I do reply with something like “こちらこそ、よろしくお願いします” (though I’m not fully sure if I’m using it right). Most of the time, however, the leader sends it in the morning Japan time, and I usually log in much later (around 1–2am JST, which is already the next day in Japan). By the time I see the message, they’re often already offline or about to log off. If I reply at that point, it feels a little weird timing-wise, and if I send the same greeting every day it also starts to feel a bit stiff. Also, they usually say in guild chat when they’re about to log off, so I might do a quick goodbye there but not reply to the dm. Because I keep overthinking this, I often end up not replying to the dm, and I haven't replied to the leader for several days now,and if I keep not replying, it starts to feel a bit impolite — so, what’s the best way to reply or handle it?

  • I don't know what you mean by guild and stuff, but as far as I can tell, there's nothing unique to Japanese culture about that, so chances are, any advice could you potentially get here would be generic elsewhere. Be it hobby or work, among people from anywhere, if it's online you'll deal with the same situations.

    Just so you know, Japanese language doens't have variety of general greets where you can easily greet in different and original manner everyday throughout the year, just as much as it is for English. I mean I'm sure you're more comfortable about it in English and should feel quite insecure on that front when you don't feel like you're speaking your own words, but I can say that there's nothing weird about "よろしくおねがいします" every day. I bet others aren't quite unique everyday either, or are they?