“Use Of Business Cards” is easily in Stan’s Cafe’s Top Ten of training needs. If I have one on me it normally dog eared and covered in pocket fluff and biscuit crumbs. Unfortunately in Tokyo our ineptitude was sorely exposed. This is a culture that does the business card well. When you are introduced to someone new in a business context there’s a ‘hello’ and bow and WHAM the business card is right there, Japanese on one side, English on the other, presented held in two hands with a further bow. Meanwhile Charlotte and James are scrabbling around in bags, pulling wads of old paper and metro tickets out of back pockets. To compound matters, having anticipated the need for cards in this showcase context I grabbed a big handful as I ran from the office only to discover the top card said James Yarker and the fifty underneath say Alan James.

Pathetic.

James