Hideki Decodes Japan

Signals your Japanese counterpart will never explain

Written by someone who sat on both sides of them.

Japanese business communication carries decisions in places English speakers are not trained to look. Not in the words, which are deliberately mild, but in what happens after them. This site takes one signal at a time and shows how a native actually reads it, including the parts nobody is taught directly.

Start here

Your Japanese deal has not been rejected yet. Here is how to check.

Three checks to run after the silence starts, the one message that settles it, and what that message triggers inside their company.

Who this is for

People outside Japan who sell to, buy from, negotiate with, or work inside Japanese organisations in English, and who keep running into answers that sound positive and lead nowhere.