A client asked me this week: “What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done in Japan?”
(Only conversationally, I hope you understand).

Thirty years of faux pas flashed before me. Mangled names. Mystery sauces. Naked hot springs with tiny towels.

The winner?

Fresh off the boat, I told two teenage students in class I hated manjū – sweet bean paste.
Except I didn’t say manjū.
I said a very different Japanese word a middle-aged guy had taught me in an izakaya the night before.
(Similar sound, in my defence. Also, apologies to my Japanese readers).

They froze. I froze.
Then I made it worse: I played dumb.
They knew I knew. I knew they knew.

They never came back…

The wrong word was accidental, but the cover-up was mistake number two.
And it often does more damage than the first.

The second that social alarm trips, your brain offers five quick escape routes:

All five feel like quick fixes.

None of them are.

Back in #33, I gave you O.O.P.S. for verbal disasters.
These are the five emergency exits your ego will point to instead.

Ignore them.

Put your foot through a conversation?

Repair it.

Don't hang a picture over the hole and hope nobody notices.

💡 PRO TIP: Three seconds of honesty beats three minutes of digging.
(Your own grave).

⛔ DON’T SAY: Nothing. (That was my mistake).

“To make a mistake is human; to blame it on someone else, that’s even more human.”
(Anonymous)

🎬 Name the film

👇 Answer at the end

Speaking of mistakes, the English-speaking world has been making the same one for years.

Americans call them cookies, except when they call them biscuits (with gravy - animals).
Brits call them biscuits, except when we call them cookies.
(There is a difference, apparently).
And don't even start on Jaffa Cakes.

Live abroad long enough, and this stuff gets weirdly emotional. British people in Japan will react to a pack of Hobnobs like someone’s smuggled in an old family pet.

Everybody has one. A biscuit that means something.

Is NASA about to change that meaning?

Researchers just 3D-printed a cookie called µBites.
Vanilla-scented, made from recycled PET bottles and waste biomass.
Two of those should not be on the packet.
The idea is to create food for long missions where resupply isn’t exactly Uber Eats-friendly.
Perfect for "resource-limited situations" like space, or Ryanair.

One small step for snacks. One giant leap toward Soylent Green.

⛔ DON'T SAY: "Tastes a bit... bottley."

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The manjū incident wasn’t a one-off. Languages are full of sneaky traps.

False friends.

Words that look or sound familiar in another language, then betray you completely.

A few favourites:

💬 FOLLOW-UP: Know any good ones? Reply!

“Why does a communication newsletter keep talking about robots?”

Fair question.

While everyone frets about AI chatbots, the real revolution is about to walk through your front door on two legs. Or roll in on tracks. Or maybe wheels.

At Beijing’s World Humanoid Robot Games this week, bots battered human athletic records across the 400m, 1500m, high jump, and even the 100m – clocking 8.86 seconds.

Meet Usain Bot…

It’s not so much the hardware. It’s more the conversations they’ll force us to have.

You don’t need to know how they work.
(Though handy when the uprising starts.)

But you probably do need an opinion for when they stop living on screens and start standing next to you on the bus.

💬 FOLLOW-UP: “Where would you like to see bots — and where would you draw the line?”

For when your brain needs a biscuit.

Ben Stiller tries to impress his girlfriend's father. The father is ex-CIA. And Robert De Niro. Everything goes wrong. Then worse.

💬 YOUR TURN: What film curled your toes in embarrassment?

A) 👩 Mum — obviously (54%)
B) 👨 Dad — final boss (32%)
C) 🧒 Me — tiny dictator (7%)
D) 🤷 Nobody — family free-for-all (7%)

💬 Your Two Cents

B: “Mum, obviously. And what awful choices she made!”
A: “Me. Wrapped them round my little finger 😜”
B: “Dad thought it was him, but...”

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