Japan's companies offer world-class service--or do they? Service station attendants, department store gift wrappers and white-gloved taxi drivers perform low-value tasks with astonishing grace and efficiency. But what about the doctors, real estate agents and financial workers who provide services with lifelong impact?

In the "mission-critical" healthcare, finance and real estate service sectors, Japan falls surprisingly--even dangerously--short. Yet these very deficiencies create unprecedented opportunity, especially for outsiders bold enough to buck tradition and insist on world-standard service methodologies. Join the author of Saying Yes to Japan: How Outsiders Are Reviving a Trillion Dollar Services Market (co-authored by Carl Kay) for an incisive, insider look at the surprising reality--and the amazing potential--of Japan 's multi-trillion dollar domestic service economy.

Tim Clark is an entrepreneur, writer and translator whose work has appeared in the New York Times , Red Herring , Asiaweek, the International Herald Tribune and other magazines and journals . C lark worked for Japanese, U.S. and Hong Kong companies in Japan for nearly a decade, and in 1994 launched a pioneering Japan-focused market research consultancy that he sold to a NASDAQ-listed firm six years later. Today he serves as nonresident Senior Fellow for Tokyo-based venture capital firm SunBridge and teaches international marketing at Portland State University.