Computer-mediated communication now allows asynchronous
multistreaming from distance education providers to students around the world. Multistreaming in its most simple form is through the online tutor to each student individually. However, if distance tutoring is to fulfil its role then students' cultural
differences must be better understood. Chinese, Japanese and Korean students in higher education have been widely stereotyped as extensively employing rote-memorisation and surface approaches to their learning, achieving a low level of understanding, poor-quality learning and weaker academic outcomes. Eastern Asians differ in their learning from Western students, and these differences have been enshrouded as 'cultural differences' by Richardson or 'personality'differences by Watkins. Mason has also described them as slow to adapt to pro-active collaboration and interactivity for learning, even when asynchronous and not extemporizeo'. Much research has been conducted in the past twenty years into students' conceptions of learning and approaches to studying .mostly in the West. However Saljo's conceptions of learning may not apply across cultures. The present study used Marion's second-order phenomenography to discover the non- Western conceptions held in Japan, and Entwistle's Approaches to Studying Inventory to discover different underlying constructs. Chinese have shown different constructs found by Biggs, Kembec Sadler-Smith, Watkins and others. Now Japanese students in higher education have been found to show similar differences but more significantly so, attributed in considerable pari to native language learning. Early native language learning andprior educational context are concl~~dteod b e the main variable factors underlying cultural differences beheen East and West, and parallel stud~esh ould be performed on other non-western stlldent ~~opulationtos p rovide baseline mutual cultural understanding.