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WHEN THE SERVICEMAN gets his first good look at Nippon, he is amazed at the Japanese way of doing things. Why, he wonders, do the Japanese do everything backwards?

Well, the Japanese feel the same amazement when they eye the habits of the Americans. Why, the Japanese wonders, does the American beckon a person by flapping his hand with the palm toward him instead of palm away? Why does he sit on a hard, wooden chair at a high, wooden table and eat meals with tools of steel? And why does he always begin reading a magazine at the end?

The beginning of the magazine for the American is the end of the magazine for the Japanese because Japanese magazines begin at the back. Their writing is in perpendicular columns and, again contrary to the American method, is read from right to left.

This strikes the serviceman as strange, but after he spends some time in Nippon it becomes, like everything else, quite natural and orderly. And when he gets back home, he may not understand the literary turnabout.

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