No, subtlety and protocol are not the strong suit of Americans, which is one reason why the Japanese tend to… — Dave Barry

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.

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.

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.