How to ask someone to do something for you

Question

I'd like to know how to politely ask someone (as a question, not a statement) to do something for me in Japanese. I'm already aware of the basic "___をください" and "___をおねがいします" patterns, but I don't want to use these because they actually sound very rude to me.

Personally, I never say things like "Give me that book, please" in English, because it sounds rather demanding, (since it is a statement) and adding "please" at the end doesn't do much to make this sound polite, IMO. I would instead say something like "Could you please give me that book?" or "Would you mind handing me that book?," etc.

The primary difference to me is that asking for things in question forms sounds much more natural to me. I feel uncomfortable saying things like "みずをおねがいします。" regardless of whether or not this is considered perfectly polite in Japanese. I would just prefer another polite way to ask for things.

Could someone give me Japanese sentence patterns similar to:
"Could you please ____?"
"Would you mind ____?"
"Could I have you ____, please?"
"If it isn't too much trouble, could I get you to ____ for me?"

Thank you.

Answer 1

Even though Eric says it is not rude to use ください is japanese, based on your question, you are looking for a softer way to ask/request things.

・ください is like a formal and cold please but can be a bit straight sometimes. You can use it when you are the customer or the supervisor. Otherwise, to avoid this straightness, the sentence is often turned the other way around asking for the permission of your interlocutor.

• If you want to do something: verb-させてください。
• If you want something：何かを頂いてもいいですか。or 何かを頂けませんか。
• If you want someone to do something：あれをやって頂けませんか。etc.

Finally, Give me that book, please would be "その本を渡して頂けませんか。".

ps: there is a million ways to ask stuff like this so I would recommend to pick something you like first and watch what people around you use to learn new ones.