The Business Card
In Japan, Business cards (known as 名刺 meishi) are used very often when meeting business partners and are seen as a very important and integral part to introductions, almost as much as a handshake it seems. Business cards are so important that there is a whole set of rules and etiquette one must follow when presenting and receiving business cards. If these are not properly followed then you risk creating a poor first impression and potentially souring the rest of the meeting. I believe the same is true for any first impression you make upon a person be it in a business sense or just at a party – however that initial impression is made it will have a true impact upon how the other person views for you a period of time.
My work business card - Apologies about poor picture quality!
Upon arriving in Matsue, on my first day at work I was taken to the business card printing room of the Prefectural Office and placed an order for my own cards because I was told I would need them within no time. Little did I know how little time that actually was. I was whisked away to different departments within the Prefectural Office, over the road to the Shimane International Centre then over to the City Hall to make my Alien Registration Card (or gaijin card as it is affectionately known as) and also meet the gang over in the City International Affairs Division.
At each of these places, everyone in the office stopped what they were doing, stood up to face me and were waiting silently for a short self-introduction from myself before they went about introducing themselves. After I managed to blurt out a few random words of Japanese about being from Liverpool and how much of a pleasure it will be work alongside everyone, everyone shuffles closer to me one by one with a business card ready in hand and a expectant look hoping that I would whip out a card of my own. I did not.
I was told that my business cards would take a week to make. One week to print my name and details on a piece of card and cut it into rectangles. “Oh well, I probably won’t need them this week anyway!”, I thought to myself when I ordered them but it had suddenly come very clear to me that they were needed straight away and I honestly felt like a bit of prat standing there collecting dozens of little pieces of paper from all these people I had just met.
I made a small apology to everyone saying that I had just arrived and had no time to create my own business cards yet but I promised I would come back along once they were done and give them all my own, special piece of card. However despite all of this, I did feel like I set the wrong first impression by stumbling into their office whilst everyone was working – interrupting them all from work for around 10 minutes so that I could talk about myself and how I just happen to be born in the same city as The Beatles and then go on to be so cheeky as to steal a bunch of their precious cards without giving any of my own! Perhaps I was just far too nervous on my first day but that is honestly how I felt at the time.
Of course, a couple of weeks pass and I return to each of the places I previously visited on my first day and gave all the appropriate people my shiny new business cards and all was well with the world. 5 months into JET and I have a small mountain of cards stacked up on my bookshelf from all sorts of people I have met since arriving and have since lost the ability to remember any detail about. I’ve always known that I am dreadful at remembering names so I quickly got in the habit of jotting a tiny bit of information down about the person on the back of their cards to help remind me who they were whenever the time ever comes that I need to contact them.
I mentioned etiquette at the start of this post and I will post a video soon showing some of Japanese business card exchange etiquette in action. There are probably many videos like this already in existence but I can tell you now that none of them feature the Ultimate Crumpet!
For the time being however, I will leave you with this. An example of how NOT to receive a business card. CRUSH!
You have to admire the intensity of this guy though…