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From S02E10 of The Quintessential Quintuplets

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Above, we see that Miku is working part-time at some bakery. Yotsuba is visiting Miku at the bakery where Miku has just started working part-time. Miku's seniour colleague refers to Miku as Nakano-san when talking to Yotsuba about Miku's initial failed cooking/baking.

Below, a few seconds later in the episode (which I guess is maybe an hour later in the characters' time), the seniour colleague addresses Miku as Miku-chan when Miku does a little better in the cooking.

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This is not just the subtitles. The dialogue really says this. Ah here I found something on youtube: See for yourself from 11:40 to 12:15.

Question: What's up with this? Is Miku's seniour colleague really referring to Miku so differently from addressing Miku? Is the time skip here perhaps actually not 1 hour but several days (and so Yotsuba actually visits Miku more than once) ?

BCLC
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This isn't because they just became closer; It's because of (strange) Japanese culture.

When people in Japanese refers to their colleagues or friends in formal conversation, they use family name regardless of whether they are close or not. I believe 99% of Japanese people always do this (including me), but I'm not entirely sure why. Though, it's not strictly limited to do the same, so some people prefer to refer their colleague/friends with their given name.

This often involves omitting honorifics (such as -san, -chan, -kun, etc), but in this case that does not seem to be the case (perhaps because Miku's colleague is talking to Yotsuba - the older sister of Miku).

I actually once had a situation where some of my co-workers didn't know my given name (actually, I didn't know their given name either). I even think that only the HR peoples or immediate supervisor might actually know the names of their colleagues perfectly well, since Japanese people often call them by their family name at work and there is little need to know their given name (unless you get to know them well).

Skye-AT
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  • Thanks. Yotsuba is younger but of course only by a few minutes. Does this change anything? – BCLC Aug 11 '22 at 19:43
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    @BCLC That doesn't change anything I believe. Actually, we don't care about the age in formal conversations. For example, even the CEO would use Keigo (honorifics) to their every one of their employee. (and about Yotsuba... I sometimes mix up those girls and forget who's older or younger, my brain fuse isn't connected right :P) – Skye-AT Aug 11 '22 at 22:58
  • @Skye-AT Their names all have a number in them to indicate which order they were born; Yotsuba's is 4 and Miku's is 3, so Miku is older (by a few minutes). Without that, yeah, it would be really hard to keep track. – Torisuda Aug 14 '22 at 21:13