We journalists make it a point to know very little about an extremely wide variety of topics; this is how we stay objective. - Dave Barry

The method (of learning Japanese) recommended by experts is to be born as a Japanese baby and raised by a Japanese family, in Japan. And even then it's not easy.

On the business front, by 1955 the United States was being flooded with cheap, shoddy products from Japan. We of course laughed at these products and at the Japanese; we could not imagine in our wildest dreams that they would one day stomp on our consumer-electronics industry the way Godzilla stomped on Tokyo. If somebody had told us that the Japanese would eventually try to sell us cars, we would have laughed and laughed, and then we would have gone back to trying to start our flooded Nash Ramblers.

I see', said Smee, still not seeing.