Manas Kala mentions that doing startups in Japan is challenging because customers don't always give honest feedback — they're overly polite and positive. This makes it hard to iterate and improve products quickly when you can't get a clear signal on what's actually working and what isn't.
Maybe there's a way of understanding implied displeasure with a feature, since Japan is less direct. People always find ways to be polite even when they don't like something. Reading between the lines is the skill — the feedback is there, it's just encoded differently.
ちょっと…The word ちょっと (chotto) is a classic example — it literally means "a little," but when a Japanese customer says "ちょっと…" with a trailing pause, it often signals discomfort, disagreement, or displeasure without saying so directly. Learning to decode these signals could be a competitive advantage for startups operating in Japan.