Thursday's match will be the fourth between the teams since March, and that familiarity has filled Japan with confidence.
But the intimacy of the receptions (at homes and hotels), their transactional nature ($75,000 per couple is often pledged) and familiarity with that audience (usually filled with fellow businessmen and -women), appears to put Mr. Romney at ease.
The "non date" was filled with witty conversation, laughter and a deep familiarity.
But as he took requests written on slips of paper filled out by audience members, it became evident that familiarity is not synonymous with thorough mastery.
According to Richard Steinberg, Mini's manager of product strategy, applicants filled out a lengthy Web-based survey measuring their familiarity with social media and their ability to give feedback on a regular basis through an electronic logbook.
An enormous ball pit in the shape of a dog bowl is filled with giant dogfood-colored balls, presenting enough visual familiarity to entice the pups to jump in.
Experts also filled out a short form describing their medical specialty and experience and providing information about their familiarity with HCV infections.
After a short filled interval (∼10 min), participants were presented with two recognition conditions, a novelty task (NT) emphasizing the detection of novel stimuli, and a familiarity task (FT) emphasizing the detection of familiar stimuli.
Their familiarity with one another helped fill the initial board seats at Amazon.com, eBay and dozens of other Internet companies with Harvard alumni, said William Sahlman, a Harvard professor of entrepreneurship.
IMPROBABLE though it may seem, New Yorkers viewed their city with a certain innocence, living with small-town familiarity in self-sufficient neighborhoods and filling their basic needs without needing to travel more than a few blocks.
