You took the time to tell us how we’re doing at making it easier for you to live, work, and do business in Japan. Your feedback brightened our day! (We don’t mind admitting that at all.)

In Japan, a recent survey shows customers have a distinct preference for speaking to a real person. Here's what that means for your Japan-based company or service.

Ever wonder what the virtual assistant experience is like? How does it feel to have all your to-dos being taken care of? Does it really make a difference to overall feelings of well-being? To better explain the experience, a member of our team hired an independent virtual assistant for research purposes and to help describe what it was like to outsource her to-do list. Here’s what happened...