As RichardInSF said, they've been doing this for a while, and you're not going to be able to master it on the flight over here, and you're certainly not expected to. However, I've found that if you show you're making an effort to do things the Japanese way, you're hosts will be very impressed, and grateful.

Most of my meetings are with vendors (not customers) so I haven't had a great chance to test my "skills," but we get a lot of people in from overseas, and even if they screw it up, when they try to make an effort, my Japanese colleagues are always very happy.

Some of them have really screwed things up (putting their business cards on top of yours, writing on them, etc.), and no one has ever said anything that I know of. This is of course just my experience at my office, but I work for a pretty traditional Japanese company, and they do take this kind of stuff seriously.

Speaking of which, I don't know how universal this is, but at most of the larger Japanese companies when you join, you go through about 6 months of training. As a foreigner, I didn't go through that training, but apparently a lot of that time is spent practicing things like exchanging meishi (business cards), and also learning how to speak super polite Japanese (keigo), so even the young Japanese guys aren't perfect at Japanese customs!

Alex