Japanese Lesson (5) Addressing Strangers

Of course, there are times when you meet someone without introducing each other. Usually, we would just call them "miss", "madame", "mister", and the like. Japanese has titles for strangers as well.
When addressing... (far left as formal to far right as informal tense)

• a woman much older than you = obasama, obasan, obachan
• a man much older than you = ojisama, ojisan, ojichan
  
  Careful when you use them; otherwise, you may offend someone. Unless that person has some gray/white hairs, it may be better to use titles addressed to an older sister/brother which again are...
  
• older sister/stranger = (O)neesan and/or (O)neechan
• older brother/stranger = (O)niisan and/or (O)niichan
  using the '-sama' prefix is rather rare. You wouldn't call a stranger in such a highly received way would you?  Older cousins are titled in this way as well.
  A person getting offended (especially females) might be because those titles ("oba" and "oji") sound closely to addressing a granparenst which are...
  
• female grandparent = (O)baasama, (O)baasan, (O)baachan
• male grandparent = (O)jiisama, (O)jiisan, (O)jiichan
  notice it's only one letter/syllable away from the stranger title to a grandparent title (someone who's of senior citizen age) 

and as always, younger people don't have a special title to them. They're just not really addressed; if anything, say something like "that girl", "that boy", etc.

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