Foreignness is foreign to many who have had no life experiment of being away into a foreign environment for a tangible duration. This is the case of the majority. And even having had a life experience abroad, or even living abroad and keeping living there is not a visa to shift ones habit of reacting at things foreign. Culture shock can be a lifetime syndrome to live with. If it were possible to build a scale and measure foreignness of things foreign, Japan would by large hit a very high score. The basis of discourse about things foreign here in Japan is how weird, how different things are over there. TV channel bask viewers with views of foreign stuff that are always and more than anything else weird. The appeal of weirdness is also a motivation to start learning a foreign language. I do not mean that this is exclusive to Japan. I mean that when you are a business person coming to Tokyo on a business trip, chances are high that among the affable people you are going to meet here, it will be for more than one the first time to interact at such close range with a foreigner. It may be the same for you, on your first time visit to Japan. However, depending on personal experience, values, expectations of sameness beyond what does make things indeed different, you are looking, expecting as a matter of fact that there exists a common ground. It is often smaller than what you may imagine. Visiting a SME somewhere in the nook or outside Tokyo is your typical experiment at weirdness, although when you don't live her, you may not notice the scale of commotion your visit strickes.
Take "The world is flat" fallacy. This could only happen in the USA as they said about Al Capone in Chicago. Nobody being Japanese can ever think, fathom, fantasize that the world in terms of differences is going toward ever more flatness. This includes many Japanese workers detached abroad. Again, I do not mean this is exclusive to Japan. Most detached staff at any embassy in the world living here a cosy bubble is adding weirdness to the basic weirdness. It is weird that as a business person, you may interface first with these people who for the most part have not a clue about what daily life is all about as they do not live a daily life in the place where they are living.
Foreignness and the negotiation of this is at the core of interactions, be it on a personal or corporate basis. The Toyota "fiasco" is just another blow among daily blows at the fallacy of world flatness. Only simpletons seeping coffee at in Starbucks in Tokyo feel that the world is flat. International brands and the visibilities of these when you walk down the avenues of big cities are fooling you up that things are indeed flattened. But at the granular level of people to people relationship, the road is bumpy.
Crossing the road, reaching out may imply the intervention of an interpreter. Choose wisely.
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