How to actually meet business people in Okinawa

Scott Cundill · 2026-09-13 · Okinawa

Doing business in Okinawa has a particular shape to it. The island is small enough that people recognise each other, and big enough that you can go years without meeting the person you most need to know. If you run a business here, whether you are Okinawan, from mainland Japan, or from somewhere else entirely, you will have felt both of those things at once.

The person you need is often not far away. The accountant who understands your situation, the supplier who can finally solve the problem, the client who would be a good fit, is usually somewhere in the same few degrees of separation from you. A friend of a friend. Someone your neighbour already trusts.

So the useful question is not how to meet more people. It is how to find the few who are already standing one step away from you, and how to get properly introduced.

Why collecting contacts does not work

The standard advice is to network harder. More events, more business cards, more connection requests. Most people try some version of it, and then quietly stop, because it produces very little.

The reason is simple. A room full of people who all want to sell something is not a network, it is a queue. Everyone waits for their turn to explain what they do. You leave with a stack of cards, you follow up with a few, one replies politely, and nothing happens.

This is even truer in Japan, where trust is not transferred by a business card, and where an unsolicited approach from a stranger carries almost no weight. A cold email to someone who does not know you is not a small ask, it is an imposition, and most people treat it as one. That is not rudeness, it is just how trust works here.

What works instead: the introduction

The most useful thing that can happen to your business is not a lead. It is an introduction.

A lead is a name and a contact detail. An introduction is someone who knows you both saying, in effect, "I trust this person, and I think you should meet." That single sentence does more than any amount of outreach, because it lends a piece of existing trust to a relationship that has not started yet.

Anyone who has been introduced properly knows the difference. The reply comes quickly. The first meeting is relaxed. Nobody is on guard. You skip past the part where you have to prove you are worth the time, because someone they already trust has said so for you.

In Japan this matters more than almost anywhere. The introduction is not a nice extra, it is often the only door.

Yuimaru, and why it is the right idea here

There is an Okinawan word for the idea underneath all of this. Yuimaru. In Okinawa, it means we help each other.

It comes from village life, from people taking turns to help with the harvest, the roof, the work that was too big for one family. It is not charity, and it is not a favour bank. It is simply the understanding that everyone is better off when help moves freely between people, and that your turn to give, and your turn to receive, are both part of the same thing.

Applied to business, yuimaru is unusually practical. You give first. You make the introduction because it is useful to someone else, not because you are owed something. And then, because you are part of a group of people doing the same, introductions come back to you from directions you never planned for.

That is the whole mechanism. One introduction becomes a conversation, a conversation becomes a relationship, and the community gets stronger because help keeps moving through it.

The part nobody else does

Here is where the Oki Business Club is different from a networking event, a LINE group, or a drawer full of meishi. The club runs on the My Most Trusted platform, and the platform was built to do one thing that nothing else does: it makes the introduction for you.

That sounds small. It is not. Let me walk you through what actually happens.

You keep a list of people you actually trust. Not everyone you have ever exchanged cards with. Just the people you would be happy to put your name next to. Your trusted connections. Everyone on the platform is a verified, real person, and most people join because someone already on the inside vouched for them. So the whole thing is built out of trust from the start, which, in Japan, is the only way it could ever work.

Everyone says what they are looking for, and what they can help with. When you join, a friendly guide called Gemma walks you through it in a short, easy conversation. She asks what you do, who your ideal customer is, and the one that matters most, what people should think of you for. "Think of me when you need a translator who understands contracts." "Think of me when you want to open a cafe in Chatan and do not know where to start." That one line is what makes introductions possible, because now the community knows exactly when to think of you.

The platform suggests the introduction. This is the piece that changes everything. Because the people on your list have each said what they need and what they offer, the platform can look at your own trusted connections and say, quietly, these two people should probably meet. You did not have to remember that Taira san is looking for a web designer and that Maria runs a small studio in Naha. It noticed. You just say yes.

And then it writes the introduction for you. Not a template with the names dropped in, a proper introduction, in your voice, that explains why these two people should talk and what each of them brings. You read it, you change anything you like, and you send it by LINE, by email, however you prefer. It takes about a minute, and it is the kind of message that gets a warm reply, because it came from someone both people already trust.

You can see who you have in common. When you look at someone you would like to meet, the platform shows you the people you both already trust. So instead of a cold approach, which carries so little weight here, you tap a button and ask a mutual friend, someone who knows you both, to make the introduction. That is how business has always worked in Okinawa. Now it is one tap.

When your own list does not have the answer, the network does. The platform has something called the Magic Box. You type what you need in plain words, an accountant who works with foreign owned companies, a printer near Urasoe, and it searches the whole My Most Trusted network for people who match, and shows you how you are connected to them. Someone in Okinawa can find the right person in Tokyo, or Singapore, or Cape Town, through a chain of people who trust each other.

Meeting in the room turns into a connection in seconds. At an Oki Business Club meeting, you check in with a QR code, and the platform shows you who is in the room and what each person is looking for. If someone hands you their meishi, you take a photo of it, and the platform reads the card, fills in their details, and even writes a short note about who they are and what their company does, from their own website. They are on your trusted list before you have finished your coffee.

It remembers the follow up, so you do not have to. After an introduction, the platform nudges you, gently. Say thanks to the person who introduced you. Check whether the two people you introduced actually met. Follow up, politely, if nothing happened. It keeps a simple history of every introduction you have made and received, so nothing gets lost the way it does with a drawer full of cards.

And it speaks your language. English and Japanese, the platform works in the language you are comfortable in, and so does Gemma. An introduction can start in one language and be received in the other, which, on an island where so much business crosses that line, matters more than it sounds.

The rules, and why they matter

A community like this only works if people trust it, so there are a few rules, and they are deliberate.

Nobody pitches. There is no round of short commercials. If you come to sell, you will find it slow going, on purpose.

You give first. The introductions you make are the reason introductions come back to you.

Everyone is verified, and most people arrive because someone vouched for them. So when you receive an introduction, you know it was made for a good reason, by a real person, to a real person.

What it looks like in practice

A business community built this way is quieter than an event, and slower at the start.

People get to know each other properly first, over several meetings rather than one. Everyone learns what everyone else actually does, which is usually more interesting than their job title. Someone asks, "does anyone know a person who can help me with this?", and someone else says, "yes, I do," or the platform says it for them. An introduction is made. The two people meet. Sometimes it becomes business, sometimes it becomes a friendship, and both are worth having.

If you are in Okinawa and this is what you have been missing

The Oki Business Club is a business community for Okinawa, built on exactly this idea. We meet in person, we know each other by name, and we make warm introductions for one another, with a platform underneath that does the remembering and the writing, so that we can do the meeting.

It is part of the My Most Trusted network, which has 89,466 people in its Trusted Universe as of September 2026, so an introduction that starts in Okinawa does not have to stay on the island. But it starts here, with people you can actually meet for coffee in Naha or Chatan.

If you have been meaning to get to know the business community around you, and you would rather do it the Okinawan way than collect another stack of cards, come and meet us.