The key to professional success in Japan is understanding Japanese people. The authors, seasoned cross-cultural trainers for businesspeople, provide a practical set of guidelines for understanding Japanese people and culture through David A. Victor's LESCANT approach of evaluating a culture's language, environment, social organization, context, authority, nonverbal communication, and time conception. Each chapter addresses one of these topics and shows effective strategies to overcoming cultural barriers and demonstrates how to evaluate the differences between Japan and North America to help avoid common communication mistakes. The book is generously peppered with photographs to provide visual examples. Exploring language and communication topics, international relations, and the business community, this book is an excellent intercultural overview for anyone traveling to or working in Japan.

The key to professional success in Japan is understanding Japanese people. The authors, seasoned cross-cultural trainers for businesspeople, provide a practical set of guidelines for understanding Japanese people and culture through David A. Victor's LESCANT approach of evaluating a culture's language, environment, social organization, context, authority, nonverbal communication, and time conception. Each chapter addresses one of these topics and shows effective strategies to overcoming cultural barriers and demonstrates how to evaluate the differences between Japan and North America to help avoid common communication mistakes. The book is generously peppered with photographs to provide visual examples. Exploring language and communication topics, international relations, and the business community, this book is an excellent intercultural overview for anyone traveling to or working in Japan.

Haru Yamada looks at why and how differences in conversational style create misunderstandings between Americans and Japanese. Focusing on racial stereotypes and cultural misconceptions, she compares the emphasis on independence and individuality in American culture, on the one hand, with the more communal values of interdependency and connectedness in the Japanese ethos, on the other. Different Games, Different Rules addresses the complexities of cross-cultural communication in an approachable and practical way, and should be invaluable in this era of increasing economic and political interdependency between both cultures.

Haru Yamada puts a finger on why Americans and Japanese continue to miscommunicate after decades of close contact in the twentieth century. Drawing on evidence from personal and business discourse, she illustrates how the two groups aim at different goals in communication. In striving for their ideal of independence, Americans generally aim at explicit talk. In contrast, Japanese speakers tend to work towards a goal of interdependent belonging by using shaded nuances of meaning. Yamada shows how knowledge of each other's "communicative game plans" can help us to avoid these frustrating and damaging failures of communication. For those who wish to put an end to the same old story, here is a new look at an old problem.