George Mikes begins his classic text How to Be an Alien—the funny, wide-eyed tale of a Hungarian coming slowly to know the upside-down ways of his new neighbors, the English—with the simple truth, “In England everything is the other way round.” To Englishmen, of course, this applies even more to Japanese, the people who flip their light switches up, not down, for off, who used to count the hours backwards, from twelve to four, and who say “Yes” where we would say “No.” A book called How to Be a Japanese would point out that people in this looking-glass world admit to feeling happiest when they
...more
