When Japanese boys and girls go to school, they make very low bows to their
teacher and draw in the breath with a buzzing sound. This is a sign of deep
respect, and the teacher returns their politeness by making low bows to
them. Then the children sit down and begin to learn their lessons.

Their books are very odd-looking affairs to us. Not only are they printed
in very large characters, but they seem quite upside down. To find the
first page you turn to the end of the book, and you read it backwards
to the front page. Again, you do not read from left to right, as in our
fashion, but from right to left. Nor is this all: for the lines do not run
across the page, but up and down. Altogether, a Japanese book is at first
a very puzzling affair. When the writing lesson comes, the children have
no pens; they use brushes instead. They dip their brushes in the ink, and
paint the words one under the other, beginning at the top right-hand corner
and finishing at the bottom left-hand corner. If they have an address to
write on an envelope, they turn that upside down and begin with the name
of the country and finish with the name of the person--England, London,
Kensington Gardens, Brown John Mr.

But Japanese children have quite as many things to learn at home as at
school. At school they learn arithmetic, geography, history, and so on,
just as children do in England, but their manners and their conduct towards
other people are carefully drilled into them by their parents. The art of
behaving yourself towards others is by no means an easy thing to learn
in Japan. It is not merely a matter of good-feeling, gentleness, and
politeness, as we understand it, but there is a whole complicated system
of behaviour: how many bows to make, and how they should be made. There
are different forms of salutation to superiors, equals, and inferiors.
Different ranks of life have their own ways of performing certain actions,
and it is said that a girl's rank may easily be known merely by the way