English Translation
How are you?
How does きげん — “mood” or “health and well-being” — come to be written with these two kanji — “machine” and “dislike”?
@Terence
You can interpret 機嫌をとる as “to take a precautious action not to stimulate someone’s mechanism of hatred.” 機 refers to any “mechanism” including both physical and mental ones.
機嫌 derived from a Buddhism term: 息世譏嫌戒（そくせきげんかい）, meaning “a Buddhist monk should refrain from any actions and behaviors that can be condemned by the public in order to not work, to raise money from them (beg) instead, to sustain his daily life and to focus on religious trainings.” People don’t give away money to a bad monk. That’s the etymology of 機嫌, according to this article.
So, 機嫌をとる or 機嫌を伺う sometimes means “to kiss someone’s a**.” “How are you?” can be expressed in many ways in Japanese, one of which is “how is your mental mechanism today? I hope I’m not irritating you” = ご機嫌いかがですか？
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