Useful Japanese Phrases 5 / ～してしまった。 I'm going to introduce a tip of making your Japanese more emotional. I think you often see or hear the expression on the title of this entry at the end of Japanese sentences. Like this; 「今日寝坊してしまった。」、「携帯電話を充電するのを忘れてしまった。」 I guess many those learning Japanese may already know this phrase. Do you know what Japanese people imply by using it instead of using just past tense? This is it : You did do something against your will, or you didn't mean to do and wanted to avoid doing something, but you actually did it. From the viewpoint of the nature of Japanese language, we use it very often. I'll take the two sentences above as the example. Here are the English translations of them : “I overslept today.” , “I forgot to charge my cellphone up.”. Of course, 「今日寝坊した。」 and 「携帯充電するの忘れた。」 are also completely fine. However very strictly speaking, especially in casual conversation, they sometimes slightly sound like you only are stating a fact. Thus with “～してしまった”, your Japanese becomes more emotional and more visualized. This is extreme case, but 「今日寝坊した。」,「で？(So what?)」. 「今日寝坊しちゃった。」,「　大変だったね。それでちゃんと仕事に間に合った？(Oh, it was tough. Did you make it to work?)」. Something like that. Nobody wants to oversleep, lest they be late for work or school, and regret oversleeping. That's why it's better to use this expression instead of just past tense to make your feeling more clear. As I said above, make sure that it's quite a marginal nuance. If a person reply 「で？」 when you say 「寝坊した。」, it's merely that he's being cold, I think. Get it as a means of making your Japanese sound active. However exception exists in everything. There is a situation where you can use it in good meaning. It's when what makes you happy unexpectedly happened. 「聞いて！　昨日ついに彼女とデートしちゃった！」、「昨日レディー・ガガに会っちゃったよ！」 “Guess what! I finally had a date with her!”, “Yesterday, I bumped into Lady Gaga.”(It can't be, can it?) At these situations, this phrase had good meaning. At the end, 「～してしまった。」 is normal,　「～しちゃった。」 is more casual and 「～してしまいました。」 is polite(it's suitable for keigo sentences.) My explanations tend to become long, since my English isn't good enough yet. If you have any questions, ask me anytime. Thank you for reading it!