What message to you perceive when you see a person bowing at you?

The meaning of bowing is quite significant in eastern culture, and especially important in Japanese daily life. Depending on the context, bowing could mean apology (when you bump into someone), appreciation (after you made a purchase from a store), and greeting (equivalent to saying hello and good morning). In the company I work that, for example, we often have meetings with guests and clients. When the meeting is done, our team would walk the guests to the elevator door and wait for the elevator with them. Once they stepped into the elevator, all team members will make a bow at the guests until the door closed. That is to show deep appreciation and good business manner.

But here is a challenging scenario I encountered one day when having lunch in a Japanese beef bowl restaurant YOSHINOYA. Near the cash register, there was a sign with an illustration of a staff bowing with a smile, some Japanese text and then logos of two popular NFC payment card “WAON” and “Suica”. Let me explain why I think the signage design could be confusing, especially to foreigners who cannot understand Japanese:

Full Body Gesture — it is pretty clear that the illustrated character is doing a bow at person who’s reading the sign, there’s no ambiguity about it. However as mentioned before, bowing could mean appreciation or apology.

Facial Cue — this one is subtle to pick up but important nonetheless: on the face of the character we could easily identify the eyes in the upper part of the face; however what is that curved line below it? It is a smile, or is it a nose where the character is now bowing with his/her head down?
(a) If the line is a smile, then the character could be making a pleased facial expression, indicating that the the subject of sign is to thank you for using the indicated payment methods.
(b) If this line is the nose otherwise, then the character is making a large head dip which ressemble a deeper bow. That can be interpreted as a big apology and further understood as “we do not accept the payement methods”.

Japanese text — obviously, to those who cannot understand Japanese, this instruction would have no use in explaining the message.

Logos at the lower right corner of the sign there are two logos of the payment systems. The logos are neutral and don’t convey any information of the acceptance of the payment methods.

Answer: 「当店ではWAON、Suicaはご利用いただけません。ご了承こださい」(meaning: this store does not accept WAON and Suica cards. We appreciate your understanding.)

My Suggestion: stick to international standard to indicating “No”. It’s boring but it works.