I’ve been doing a lot of shopping recently; for an apartment, a fridge, a TV, a washing machine, and a whole lot of furniture. One phrase I’ve found myself using a lot while shopping is “shou ga nai”. In Japan, when you rent an apartment there is often 礼金 (reikin), which is literally “gratitude money”. This is typically one or two months of rent. I really don’t like the idea, because you never see this money again and it doesn’t have any direct value to you, but when I found a great apartment that wanted 2-month reikin I found myself saying “shou ga nai”. When I went to pay the reikin/deposit/first month/auctioneer fees/insurance there were quite high bank fees, but I just thought “shou ga nai” and paid them right away. There are plenty more times I’ve used this with furniture and electrical appliances too, over the last week.
The best approximation in English is “there’s no helping it”, I suppose. But it really is a mindset rather than just a few words. When a big decision is ahead of oneself and a compromise has to be made, rationalising the compromise is important to keep away that horrible old buyer’s remorse. It can be tough to compromise using logic, but “shou ga nai” helps compromise without having to resort to actually really compromising: it’s a shortcut! I don’t want to give away 2 months of rent for (what I perceive as) “nothing”, but—shou ga nai—has to be done.
At the same time, I have been doing my best to still be a good shopper. Though shou ga nai comes up all the time, I managed to get my reikin negotiated down to 1 month, and I transferred a lot of extra money in one go to bring down the bank fees as much as possible, and so on—but it is always there.
Maybe part of this is owing to my mother’s “shopping genes”? Also, on my way to Dublin Airport last month, I ran into my Japanese teacher on the train and one piece of advise that she gave me is to try to hold onto my ability not to take “no” for an answer, that lots of non-Japanese have, but that lots of Japanese lose (in part to “shou ga nai”, surely).
I leave discussion of whether the “shou ga nai” has an effect on how the Japanese deal with natural disasters, crazy low interest rates, and so on, to commenters 
