BANZAI!

All I know of Japan I learned at Narita Airport...and from WWII library books that smelled of battleship.

Japanese people are obsessed with duty free merchandise: liquor, cigarettes, electronics, cosmetics. Why? Because they once tried to conquer the Pacific and were beat back by leathernecks building refueling posts for US bombers.

Japanese airport workers are eager to help and unfailingly polite. Which is why kamikaze pilots wore ceremonial headbands and toasted sake before leaving in their rickety planes to die.

There are many popular American restaurant chains in Tokyo. Japanese dive bombers caught the US Navy with its proverbial pants down at Pearl Harbor.

Sleek, modern design set off by peculiar but useful details make contemporary Japanese architecture very different than even fifty years ago...when many abandoned Japanese soldiers were never told the war was over. Most died of old age, still believing the war was raging elsewhere.