Dave Barry Does Japan. - book reviews

I don't know if it's possible to justify what happened to Hiroshima - I certainly wouldn't try to justify it to the victim's families. But I found myself wanting to shout to the other museum visitors: Do you know WHY my country did this? Do you wonder what would make a civilized country do such a thing?

The only Westerner I met in japan who had actually learned to read Chinese/Japanese characters was Tom Reid, who works for the Washington Post. He was always trying to explain it to me. He'd write down something that looked like this:

Then he'd say, "OK, this character means `library infested with vermin.' See, this line here" - here he points to a line that appears identical to all the other lines - "looks like a tree root, right? And books are the root of knowledge, right? Get it? And this line" - he points to another random line - "looks like the whisker of a rat, right? You see it, right? RIGHT?"

COPYRIGHT 1994 Point Foundation
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