> I have always felt uncomfortable with the concept of "inside face and outside face". It comes off as disingenuous and dishonest. Or is the unsubtle expressio

> I have always felt uncomfortable with the concept of "inside face and outside face". It comes off as disingenuous and dishonest. Or is the unsubtle expression of the concept uncomfortable? Americans do the same thing; you can see this in the casual talk Americans also have with cashiers or wait staff. Just because you're friendly and chatting doesn't mean you actually want to be friends and go out and do something together. The Culture Map by Erin Meyer expresses this idea as a spectrum from a peach to a coconut: on the one end, you get a soft exterior with a hard interior; on the other, a hard interior with a soft exterior. The point though, is that everyone does this -- just in a different way. I've known some Japanese people who've gone to the US, been confronted with the super friendly casual American attitude, then been horribly offended when it turned out that that friendliness wasn't "real." Part of this is the stereotype that Americans are "honest and direct," and part of this is that Americans tend toward the peach end of the spectrum, while Japanese people tend toward the coconut end.