In Japan, there is a right way to do everything. It applies to the way you eat ramen, how you cross the street, do business, and definitely how you bow. I’m told there is even a right way to paint. As my translator is explaining to me about an hour after landing in Tokyo, my initial breakdown of this concept was that there was an “efficient” way to do everything in Japan, but I was missing the point. There is a strict adherence to the right way here, to perfection; the guidelines are so complex that I planned, for the rest of my trip, to ask a thousand questions and presume the answers were going to be a bit confusing. But there is a correct way for everything here, and I’m suddenly self-conscious in front of a bowl of miso ramen.
