In Japan, the most important word is "sumimasen." It means I'm sorry. It also means excuse me, thank you, and I apologize for existing in your general area. My coworker Matsuda says it about two hundred times a day. Last year, our company sent him to a small city in Wisconsin. Nobody warned him about "ope." "Ope" is what people in the Midwest say when they bump into you. Or almost bump into you. Or see you from across a parking lot and suspect that, someday, they might bump into you. It is sumimasen. In one syllable. He found this out on his third day, at the coffee station in a Kwik Trip. A woman reached for the creamer at the same time he did. WOMAN: "Ope! Sorry, just gonna sneak right past ya." MATSUDA: "Sumimasen." (bows) WOMAN: "Oh, you're fine!" MATSUDA: "Sumimasen." (He was now apologizing for her apology.) WOMAN: "No, hon, YOU'RE fine!" MATSUDA: (bows deeper) WOMAN: (steps back to give him room) "Ope—" MATSUDA: (steps back to give her room) "Sumimasen—" They both moved left. They both moved right. Then a man holding three Glazers came around the corner. MAN: "Ope." Now there were three. For six minutes, three adults apologized to each other at a coffee station in Wisconsin. Nobody had done anything wrong. Nobody could get to the coffee. Finally, an employee named Sheila came out from behind the counter and directed them like airplanes. SHEILA: "Okay, ope, folks. Ma'am, you go. Sir, you hold. Buddy, you're fine. Everybody's fine." Nobody believed her. They kept apologizing all the way to the register. Matsuda studied "ope" the way he studies everything. Carefully. With notes. He learned there are levels. "Ope" for a small bump. "Ope, sorry" for a medium bump. "Oh, ope, sorry about that, bud" for a spilled drink. And for a true disaster, a long, slow, sad "Ooooope." By his second month, he was fluent. He said "ope" when the printer jammed. When his coffee spilled. When his boss called him into the office and told him he'd been promoted. MATSUDA: "Ope." His boss thought about it. BOSS: "...Yeah. That's actually right." Meanwhile, the office was learning his word. A guy named Brad said "sumimasen" when he took the last donut. Then everybody started saying it. And one day in December, in a break room in Wisconsin, the two words collided, and a new one was born. "Ope-masen." They still say it. Matsuda left in June. "Ope-masen" did not. He told me the strangest part wasn't the word. It was what came after it. "In Japan, when you apologize, the other person apologizes back," he said. "It never ends. You bow until somebody gives up." "In Wisconsin, when you apologize, they say: 'You're fine.'" Matsuda is 44 years old. He said he couldn't remember anyone ever telling him he was fine. Not like that. Not a stranger. Not at a coffee station, by the creamer, for no reason at all. "Every single day," he said. "Somebody told me I was fine." He came home in June. Last week, on a packed train in Tokyo, he bumped into an old man in a gray suit and said, without thinking: "Ope." The old man looked at him for a long moment. Then, very quietly, he said: "...Ope?" Yesterday, I heard a teenager say it at a convenience store. It's spreading. Wisconsin, sumimasen.