Some interesting fact I forgot to mention about greeting in Germany is that you can also greet people very often. Some colleagues at work like to shake hands every day with people they know and stumble upon. I integrate myself into my surrounding my doing the same. But it’s not the same everywhere, however this is not the first workplace I’m at where such a tradition is kept
This can be somewhat irritating, especially since people try to avoid shaking hands more than exactly once per day with you. So basically you have to remember for everyone you’ve met if this is the first time today or not. And having your hands full is also not very often an acceptable excuse for not shaking hands. You’ll need to find a solution how to solve that
It’s a lot easier with people you barely know or don’t know at all. For those you just need to pick the right greeting according to the time of the day.
Some memories about my stay in Japan: There people often greet each other with a nod or a short bow, depending on if it’s rather in passing by or properly meeting. When I was led around the department and introduced to the important people, I bowed properly to everybody, which was I think the right thing to do.
The angle at which you bow and all that stuff is also very complicated in their culture, form what I hear, and generally looked more submissive to me (instead of honourable).
Something that I observed, but it might not be true or just coincidence: When people leave office the say goodbye in a small bow too, which seemed to be a very low bow if they leave earlier, and a rather lazy excuse of a bow if they are leaving very late, after having a long working day.