Thanks for the translation Jed.
I lived in Japan with my parents back around 1954-56. I reckon I was around 2 years when we moved there. It would have been a good age to learn a 2nd language - if only I lived there longer. I am reminded of the 1980s TV Miniseries Shogun, staring Richard Chamberlain and Toshirô Mifune. As a lost sea captain who gets stranded in Feudal Japan, Blackthorne (R. Chamberlain) along with his crew must learn how to understand the complexities of the Japanese feudal culture, or else die. It's your basic rags to riches story. The miniseries was widely popular and fun for me to watch. One of the little things we learn during the show is that that the Japanese language is apparently better equipped than many western languages in the art of deflecting one's response in regards to something you really don't want to answer outright. As I understand it, it was one of the ways an individual could maintain some sense of privacy within a culture where the concept of privacy, insofar as the civilization was concerned, had little value. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson OrionWorks.com zazzle.com/orionworks
