[FROM THE INTRODUCTION]

No, Japanese is not the language of the infinite. Japanese is not even vague. The people of Sony and Toyota did not get where they are today by wafting incense back and forth. The Japanese speak and write to each other as other literate people do. If Japanese is "unique," that is because it possesses vocabulary and grammatical constructions and idioms that occur in no other language--but of course that is what makes all languages unique.

Undeniably, Japanese is different from English. The language is different, the people are different, the society is different, and all of these are enormously interesting precisely for that reason.... A Japanese sentence, with its verb coming at the end, is not only backwards but upside-down.... But we must never let its apparent strangeness blind us to the simple fact that Japanese is just another language. And we can increase the precision with which we understand that language if we do away with some of the nonsense that continues to cling to it even in the age of the computer and electric nose-hair trimmer.

[Previously published as "Gone Fishin'"; now with a new chapter on upside-down sentences.]