Japanese in The Office
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This post is about Japanese in The Office (US), not about actual Japanese in an actual office. For that, I highly recommend that you go read Will Jasprizza’s posts at Nihongojouzu about phone skills, etc. He’s on the ball. For this post, however, you only need about 1/30th of an introductory course to Japanese in order to comprehend what’s going on.
Meet Dwight Schrute of the American adaptation of the UK’s brilliant sitcom export, The Office. He thinks the word senpai is nearly equivalent to co-sensei. It’s pretty common for his power-grabbing, control freak, egocentric character to mistakenly prop himself up with falsehoods. But let’s just do a rudimentary review for those who may have been duped by his big talk. Senpai (先輩) is a word that is best understood in its proper context. It’s part of a relationship dynamic - you need to know the word kohai (後輩) to get a better grasp of senpai.
The easiest way to help define this situation is to look at junior - senior relationships. When someone is new to something, they look up to people who’ve got more experience. When you are orienting someone to a new situation, you’re acting as a superior. When you’re receiving instruction and doing menial helping tasks for the superior, you’re the subordinate. Now, factor in ages, and you’re getting closer to approximating the idea of a senpai-kohai relationship. A freshman looks up to a sophomore, and the sophomore takes the freshman under his wing. In this situation, the freshman is the kohai. The sophomore is the senpai. But if you bring a junior into it, the sophomore is a senpai to the freshman, but a kohai to the junior. The terms are relative, and they change based on the relationships involved. You wouldn’t call and tell your sensei that it’s his senpai, unless you were his superior… Ha ha. Wrong relationship, Dwight. You’re a senpai to the kids, not the teacher. Anyway, I may have muddied the water even further, but hopefully that vaguely explains the words a little bit. Better than Dwight’s misleading snobbery, in any event. 
For the curious, this clip came from Episode 6 of Season 2, “The Fight.” Also, just in keeping with the completely subjective grading scale used for the first season of Heroes, I’ll score this performance. Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson : 2). 