How do you say "excuse me" in Japanese?

Question

As in when your passing through and someone is blocking the way, you say "excuse me". This is not the other excuse me, which is either すみません or 失礼します, which is not what I meant.

Also, how do you call someone's attention from far away. For example a Japanese forgot his bag when left. In English you'd say "Sir/Maam/Hey you. You forgot your bag."

Answer 1

ALMOST, you do in fact use すみません but you need to add が, without it you're just apologizing. In a very formal way you rather say 恐れ入りますが, less formal but still formal すみませんが/失礼ですが, あのー is more colloquial but I don't think anyone would get offended if you used it, you use it both to interrupt someone and to ask someone to move to pass through or when you simply want to politely ask something out of the blue.



As for calling someone, あのー works well if they're close by, like ''excuse me, you dropped this''. If you really need to use some vocative おじさん works with men. おい！ちょっと！ can be used, too. They're colloquial. The Japanese language doesn't particularly use as many appellatives as English does, so words like Ma'am, Sir, etc. are usually not translated, their meaning is contained in the formal conjugation, especially if you use 敬語「けいご」.

Answer 2

I'm 99% sure that すみません can be used in both these situations . . .

Answer 3

isn't Sumimasen use as in "get out of my way Jack" and Gomenasai is "Excuse me for doing something to you" (like stepping on your foot as you let me pass)

In this case would you say Sumimasen as you pass and Gomenasai as you step on his toe while passing?