Question
I was sitting in the audience at a traditional kabuki performance at Kabuki-za in Ginza, and during the intermission, I overheard a Japanese couple next to me say something that sounded like “owarimasu.” I wasn’t sure if they were talking about the show ending, or if the word meant something else entirely — like finishing a task or closing up. I’ve seen it pop up on train announcements too, and I want to make sure I actually understand what’s being said. What does owarimasu meaning in Japanese?
Japango Editor Team
終（お）わります
Owarimasu
It ends / It will end / It finishes
Let’s break this apart. 終（お）わります comes from the dictionary-form verb 終（お）わる, which means “to end” or “to finish.” The ～ます ending is what makes it polite — this is the form you’ll hear in public announcements, from staff at theaters, and in any situation where someone is speaking courteously. So when that couple at Kabuki-za said 終（お）わります, they were most likely saying “it’s ending” or “it’ll end soon.”
Here’s the thing English speakers miss: 終（お）わる is intransitive. The show ends on its own. You don’t end it. If you want to say “*I* will finish something” — like a task or a meal — you’d reach for the transitive partner, 終（お）える. Two different verbs. 終（お）わる is “it ends.” 終（お）える is “I end it.” This pair trips people up constantly, and honestly, even intermediate learners mix them.
On train platforms in Tokyo, you’ll hear もうすぐドアが閉（し）まります right alongside 終点（しゅうてん）です — but 終（お）わります itself often shows up in announcements like 本日（ほんじつ）の営業（えいぎょう）は終（お）わります, meaning “today’s service is ending.”
After seventeen years of teaching, here’s something I still correct weekly: students in my Singapore corporate classes love to say 仕事（しごと）が終（お）わります when they mean “I’ll finish work.” Grammatically, that’s fine — work ends. But one executive used it in a meeting at his Tokyo office and his Japanese colleagues thought he meant the *project itself* was wrapping up, not that he personally was leaving for the day. Small verb, big misunderstanding. What he needed was 仕事（しごと）を終（お）えます — “I will finish the work.” That transitive/intransitive difference isn’t just textbook trivia. It changes what people hear.
One more phrase to pocket: 終（お）わりました. Past tense. You’ll hear this the moment a kabuki act finishes, or when a shop clerk announces the last item has sold out at a depachika food hall in Isetan Shinjuku. Listen for it next time — once you recognize 終（お）わる and its forms in the wild, you’ll start catching it everywhere, on platform announcements, in izakaya last-order calls, even in the closing credits of late-night variety shows. That’s when a word stops being vocabulary and starts being yours.
