# Quote — Dave Barry, Dave Barry Does Japan

> I never really did get accustomed to all the bowing. According to the guidebooks, there's an elaborate set of rules governing exactly how you bow, and who bows the lowest, and when, and for how long, and how many times, all of this depending on the situation and the statuses of the various bowers involved. Naturally, my family and I, being large, ignorant foreign water buffaloes, were not expected by the Japanese to know these rules. Nevertheless, we did feel obligated to attempt to return bows when we got them.
>
> This happened quite often. It started when we arrived at our hotel in Tokyo. As I was descending the steps of the airport bus, two uniformed bellmen came rushing up and bowed to me. Trying to look casual but feeling like an idiot, I bowed back. I probably did it wrong, because then they bowed back. So I bowed back. The three of us sort of bowed our way over to where the luggage was being unloaded, and I bowed to our suitcases, and the bellmen, bowing, picked them up and rushed into the hotel. We followed them past a bowing doorman into the hotel, where we were gang-bowed by hotel employees. No matter which direction we turned, they were aiming bows at us, sometimes from as far as twenty-five yards away. Bobbing like drinking-bird toys, we bowed our way to the reception desk, where a bowing clerk checked us in.

- Author: [Dave Barry](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-barry.md)
- Book: [Dave Barry Does Japan](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-barry/dave-barry-does-japan.md)
- Page: 44
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dave_Barry#Dave_Barry_Does_Japan_(1992)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Topics: [humor](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor.md), [travel](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/travel.md)
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-barry/dave-barry-does-japan/i-never-really

## More from this book

> In Hiroshima, a bellman arrived at our room, literally, within one minute. He had obviously been sprinting, and he looked concerned. He checked the faucet, found it was, indeed, malfunctioning, and- now looking extremely- concerned- sprinted from the room. In no more than three minutes he was back with two more men, one of whom immediately went to work on the bathtub. The sole function of the other one, as far as we could tell, was to apologize to us on behalf of the hotel for having committed this monumentally embarrassing and totally unforgivable blunder. "We are very sorry," he kept saying, looking as though near tears. "Very sorry." "It's OK!" I kept saying. "Really!" But it did no good. The man was grieving. The bathtub was fixed in under ten minutes, after which all three men apologized extravagantly in various languages one last time, after which they left, after which I imagine the hotel's Vice President for Faucet Operations was taken outside and shot. No, just kidding. He probably took his own life. That's how seriously they take their jobs over there.

p. 48 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-barry/dave-barry-does-japan/in-hiroshima-a-bellman.md)

Topics: [work](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/work.md)

> My most important finding, however, does not involve the differences between us and Japan; it involves the similarities. 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.

p. 19 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-barry/dave-barry-does-japan/my-most-important.md)

Topics: [human nature](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature.md)

> The way I attempted to learn Japanese was by reading a book called Japanese at a Glance in the plane from San Francisco to Tokyo. This is not the method recommended by experts. The method recommended by experts is to be born as a Japanese baby and raised by a Japanese family, in Japan.

p. 20 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-barry/dave-barry-does-japan/the-way-i-attempted.md)

Topics: [humor](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor.md)