お大事に

One kind of "greeting" we usually learn in Japanese schools is saying "odaijini" to someone who is sick meaning "get better soon", "take care of yourself" or something like.

As I still have that cold (and I should classify it as flu from now... can't be just a cold anymore), I was expecting to hear that pretty often while talking to my Japanese friends. Surprisingly, so far I can't remember hearing this even once. They surely say something, but not that one. Things like "Hope you can heal that cold soon" or "you gotta sleep early" I heard a lot. The last one is interesting to show the indirectiveness the language have. Translated like that, sometimes one may understand that literally and find no meaning, or a bad meaning in that. But the intention is something like "you should rest". Interesting...

Another thing, since we're at this topic. Unlike Brazil or most western cultures I know, in Japan there's not a "polite reply" when people sneeze or cough (Tava procurando a palavra pra "espirrar"...) like "saúde" (Portuguese) or "Bless you" (English)... They simply ignore it. I thought it was strange at the first time until I remembered something that was said to me about Japanese ignore it because they think it'd be unpolite to show one's sneeze or cough was noticed... I guess it was something like that. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.