Dave Barry Does Japan

I like the relaxed way in which the Japanese approach religion. I think of myself as basically a moral person, but I'm definitely not religious, and I'm very tired of the preachiness and obsession with other people's behavior characteristic of many religious people in the United States. As far as I could tell, there's nothing preachy about Buddhism. I was in a lot of temples, and I still don't know what Buddhists believe, except that at one point Kunio said 'If you do bad things, you will be reborn as an ox.' This makes as much sense to me as anything I ever heard from, for example, the Reverend Pat Robertson.

The method (of learning Japanese) recommended by experts is to be born as a Japanese baby and raised by a Japanese family, in Japan. And even then it's not easy.

Despite the gulf, physical and cultural, between the United States and Japan, both societies are, in the end, made up of people, and people everywhere – when you strip away their superficial differences – are crazy.

I learned this from a show called Captain Video, featuring a man named, oddly, Captain Video,

Fortunately the bad guys had the tactical intelligence of a waffle iron, so the hero was able to outsmart them by ducking behind some rocks, then putting his hat on a stick and holding it

Because despite the gulf, physical and cultural, between the United States and Japan, both societies are, in the end made up of people, and people everywhere--when you strip away their superficial differences--are crazy.

The Enigma of Japanese Power, by Dutch journalist Karel van Wolferen,