That’s So Cliché, but I Forgive You! 9 Excuses for Showing Up Late that Made Japanese Women Laugh

2. Say something that she doesn’t expect: “I had bed head and it took forever to fix it.”


“It was not what I expected, so I lost the energy to get mad at him,” explained a Japanese woman in her 20s. Such a trivial excuse has the power to take away the energy of anger. Using a child-like term like “bed head” might also appeal to a Japanese woman’s motherly instinct and take the edge off the situation.