K: So, lately I’ve been thinking about a blended topic. (laughs) So I feel like I’m already starting off with a digression, but it’s Japanese technology and failed expectations by expats. Is kind of what I’ve been thinking about. And… I think that’s because of the state of the world, and a lot of my clients that I work with are language teachers or educators that are – that work for for-profit schools that call themselves non-profit, but whatever, that’s a different story. Independent international schools, and they’re all – they all seem to be really disappointed that Japan isn’t set up to use Zoom. And neither were many of the public schools. None of the public schools are set up to use Zoom. And what Zoom is – it’s an online platform for education. For teachers and meetings and things like that, so you can do e-schools and e-classrooms. And Japan just wasn’t widely set up for that. 

And just like… Japan doesn’t have smartboards in most classrooms. And what a smartboard is, it’s basically a projector that you can project images from your computer onto a screen or a whiteboard, and then you can manipulate the objects once they’ve been projected. And that’s a smartboard. Did I do a good job explaining a smartboard? Because you’ve used a smartboard. I never have. I’ve seen broken smartboards (laughs) in one of the international schools’ classrooms. I’ve never actually used one.

C: Yes, you did a good job explaining one particular type. There are a variety of smartboards. You’ve dealt with some of the other ones. Some of them that are available here in Japan, you write on it using normal markers, and then you can print out the board.

K: Yeah.

C: I know you’ve dealt with that one when you were doing corporate gigs.

K: Yeah.

C: But, yeah, you did a good job with smartboards. I think the problem with Zoom is you can’t use a fax machine to sign up for Zoom.

K: (laughs) Well, and I think, too, that Zoom just wasn’t… necessary. And I think that, for me, it’s because of a part of Japanese culture that people don’t get. And that is the personal touch.

C: Mhm.

K: The personal touch is highly valued in Japan. Like, a handwritten note rather – so, I have a psychiatrist that I’ve been working with for about a decade now, and we have a lovely working relationship. We don’t step on each other’s toes, we don’t get into each other’s lanes, and we work really great together, and I know exactly the quality of service that my clients are getting when they work with her. And… she – every – twice a year, she sends me a box of cookies. At the beginning. And with a handwritten note. And that has meant so much to me, but I have never sent her any handwritten notes because I refer far more clients to her than she refers to me.

C: Yeah.

K: So, it’s a top-down relationship where I’m at the top of the relationship because she’s at the receiving end.

C: Yes.

K: And there’s different words for receiving in Japanese. And I think, once people learn those words in Japanese, I kind of expect them to understand Japanese giving culture.

C: Mmm.

K: The fact that there are, to my knowledge, seven different words for different ways of receiving something: whether you receive it graciously, whether you receive it with gratitude, whether you’re honored to receive it – the words for “I got this from somebody. Somebody gave this to me. I received it” – it goes ways deeper in Japanese. Is that your experience?

C: Yeah. And a separate verb for “you gave it to me.”

K: Yup. And there’s a matching set for the energy that you gave it with. 

C: Yeah.

K: And… so, for me, I think that that’s what people are missing. They’re missing that, in business culture, it would be extremely word to start up a relationship without having a physical space for someone to come to and a physica