Learning to Bow

Bruce Feiler spends a year teaching in a small country town in Japan, and this memoir records what that year was like, with warmth and frankness. It opens with a traditional outdoor bath and builds toward an overnight climb up Mount Fuji.

Feiler's students take on the role of teachers too. He introduces them to American customs, while they instruct him in matters as varied as the correct way to write an address on an envelope and the etiquette of courting a young Japanese woman. The book is a look at two cultures meeting face to face, seen through one outsider's eyes.