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Not a linguist. I feel like this is just an issue of imperfect correspondence between the word "blue" in English and "ao" in Japanese. The article explains the historical reason why ao encompasses both blue and green, so I think the concept of semantic field comes into play here.

As an analogy, a MacBook is a type of laptop, and laptops, desktops and tablets are all IT devices (for lack of a better word). Apple might have you believe that a MacBook is very different from a laptop and belongs in its own category, but to me I would still lump it under laptops. If I was presented with a MacBook, a desktop and a tablet and was asked to pick out the laptop, then it would be clear to me that the MacBook is the correct choice.

Now, midori (green) is a type of ao ("grue"), and ao, kiiro (yellow) and aka (red) are all colours. English speakers argue that green is very different from blue and that they're different colours, but to Japanese speakers ao encompasses midori. If a Japanese speaker was presented with the colours green, yellow and red and was asked to pick out ao (in the context of traffic lights), then it would be clear that green is the correct choice.

There are loads of situations where words in two languages seem to directly correspond to each other, but still they are subtly different especially when the nuances of the words are considered.

I'm not sure about older people, but business/formal emails in Japanese are like at least 70% fluff. There are loads of guides on the internet like [1], just look at the English translation of the example at the top...

Depending on the level of formality you might need to conjugate verbs slightly differently or use vocabulary that's considered more respectful. From my experience the younger generation is more relaxed about the rules, but Japan as a whole is pretty slow to change.

[1] https://www.wasabi-jpn.com/japanese-lessons/how-to-write-ema...

It's been about 10 years since I used my surface pro at uni. The main problems that I remember were

1) top heavy, because all the hardware is on the screen portion, so it's difficult to balance and use it on your lap

2) lack of processing power due to the form factor and thermal limitations

3) lack of touch friendly windows apps that can make it truly useful as a tablet

1 probably can't be helped, but 2 and 3 should definitely be better now especially since Apple silicon and iOS exist, if they choose to make something like this...