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If you’re reading this page, you may be working at a non-Japanese firm with an interest in the Japanese market. Or, you may have business and even a subsidiary in Japan but are looking for some outside assistance. If this is you, then read on.

Tokurai is a boutique operation that has helped both Japanese firms in their overseas sales activities, and overseas firms in Japan, and we might be able to help you. If what you read below fits what you’re looking for send us an email and we’ll get back to you.

Short term projects with clear goals are the best way to achieve satisfaction for all parties concerned. We are primarily interested in the start-up or troubleshooting phases of business operations. For example, a medium-sized Japanese firm in a niche technical market lost their only salesperson with overseas experience. As they hired a new salesperson they also brought on Tokurai to assist with overseas marketing, technical translations, and tradeshows. This made for a smooth transition with hardly any adverse impact on sales. (We even set up English conversation classes for their engineering and sales departments!)

We also act as a distributor, importing for select customers. These customers, without their own offices in Japan, offer highly technical but custom products that need a lot of give-and-take between OEM manufacturer and supplier. Luckily for these clients, our engineering background, experience and fluency in both English and Japanese allows us to work easily with engineers and managers on both sides of the Pacific.

Of course we also produce technical, scientific, and sales/marketing translations and original materials. One of our oldest customers is a tradeshow organizer for whom we deliver manuals and advertising. Our work has included crafting journalism articles about Japanese tradeshows for JETRO, the Japan External Trade Organization and working with the internationalization committee of a major Japanese medical conference to expand their visitor base.

Our Japanese principal, Ritsuko Tokuda, worked for many years in the University of Michigan Health System as a medical interpreter and translator. Medical interpretation often deals with extremely emotional clinical situations, for example when the diagnosis of a life-threatening disease must be disclosed to, and then fully discussed with, a patient. Ms. Tokuda has exceptionally deep experience in sensitive interpretation between clinician and patient, as well as precision translation of documentation heavily salted with specialty medical terms and jargon.

Our American principal, Gary Rymar, has a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Michigan (as well as undergraduate degrees in Japanese and electrical engineering, and has worked in both the broader field of Test and Measurement and in the more focused area of Medical Devices and Components in both the US and Japan. He also has worked in advertising and marketing boutiques working in translation and internationalisation.