After the 2024 Paris Olympics, some asked me why Japanese teenage girls seem to excel at skateboarding. My answer was that young people in Japan have learned how to have fun while being excellent at what they love. Similarly, something else Japan is good at is Employee Assistance. Members of EAPA’s Japan Branch are very proud of the fact that for the last ten years, Japan is second only to the US in the number of new Certified Employee Assistance Professionals. Let me explain how this came about. In December 1999, I became the first CEAP in Japan. At the time, I was employed by Motorola Japan as its Internal EAP Director for the Asia Pacific Region. Having been trained by Sheila Monaghan and supervised by Steven Uhrik of Motorola, both seasoned EA professionals, I learned how to put the EAP core technology to practice in Japanese work settings for Motorola’s Japanese employees. Quickly, I realized that management consultation, one of these core technologies, worked quite well in aiding Japanese employees to break through the historical stigmas of mental health and substance use conditions and to motivate them to seek appropriate assistance.