Thus, Japanese couples on honeymoon traditionally plan matching outfits for every hour of their trip. Even girls on a Sunday shopping spree often sport the same hairstyles, false eyelashes, and white boots. Fashion becomes less about standing out than fitting in, at least within the micro-group of which you are a part.
For a foreigner, therefore, clothes don't make the man here; they simply mark the role. But roles shift at the speed of light in Japan, as people adopt a radically different voice (even a different word for "I") for colleague and secretary and boss. If it's treacherous to judge a book by its cover, how much more so if it's a foreign book and has a dozen covers to go with every audience.
In 1999, I sought out the man said to have invented karaoke, to tell him that my editors at Time had chosen him as one of the "100 Asians of the Century." He handed me in response a business card advertising his services as a dog trainer.
Excerpted from A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO JAPAN by Pico Iyer. Copyright © 2019 by Pico Iyer. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.