By W. Blake Gray One of the main characteristics of Japanese is
its vagueness. Language is culture, and Japanese helps people
get along in crowded, resource-poor cities by preventing hard
feelings in conversation. Here's a good example of how this
works: In a business meeting, everyone sits around the table
vaguely feeling out each others' position until eventually
everyone realizes what they're expected to say. Thus the first
and only vote is almost always unanimous. Here's a more
frustrating example: I think this sake is named "140"
(hyakuyonju) because it's the 140th attempt at crossing Aomori's
native Hanafubuki rice with the more famous Yamada Nishiki,
which doesn't usually grow so far north. However, I can't
confirm that; the Japanese describing it is just too vague. All
I know is that in the crossing experiments, somehow this rice
got the number "140." Maybe that's the number of wins Aomori
native Daisuke Matsuzaka expects to pile up in Boston. Maybe
it's just a mellifluous number. As a journalist, I h