michael adams wrote:

I suppose you have sheep in Japan like everyehere else, in
the more mounainous parts anyway.

Funnily enough, no, not in most areas. Most of the mountains are thickly
forested, which isn't exactly what sheep want. I believe there are sheep
in Hokkaido, and some other areas, but I've never seen one.

Most Japanese people seem to have this strange idea that lamb and mutton
are very smelly (perhaps the only time they've ever smelled it is going
past a greasy kebab house), so the meat's not much in demand.

It's just Murakami, really. He seems to have a thing about sheep. [No,
not that kind of thing. Bad troll!] One of his zaniest works is A Wild
Sheep Chase; read a summary he

http://www.naxosaudiobooks.com/PAGES/41412.htm

here's the back cover of my first ever manga which I recently
bought from a favourite charity shop haunt for 20p.

http://i17.tinypic.com/48zl2fl.jpg

Robot girl (I think)

Well, yes, sort of. She's got a human brain in a cyborg body. Her name's
Motoko Kusanagi, and she's a major in the Shell strike force, which is
struggling to keep the peace between the nations while information
technology is revolutionising the world. The story's set in the not-too
distant future, and is called Koukaku Kidoutai (The Ghost in the Shell).
The author is known in English as Shirow Masanume. You should be able to
google up enough information from those leads to tell you everything you
need to know about it.

the back cover is in fact the front cover, and the front cover
is the back cover. As you read it backwards.

According to my Japanese sources it is we westerners who read books
backwards, and they who are reading them properly.

The image many Westerners have of Japan is people in Harris tweed
sports jackets, drinking Johhny Walker whisky, and playing Beatles
records.

Funny, but that all somehow seems very congruent. My impression is that
everything's much more garbled than that. Just as an example, my
daughter and I stopped in at a noodle shop for sustenance while
Christmas shopping yesterday and they had a "Christmas set lunch",
consisting of noodles with egg and seaweed with green tea flavoured ice
cream to follow.

Working very hard and then going totally berserk for short
periods of recreation

People do work hard. In my opinion, they should go a bit more berserk a
bit more often but, yes, I guess you're right, it gets pretty wild on a
Friday night. Not in the kind of way that makes you fear for your skin -
outright aggression is pretty rare, unless you tread on a yakuza's toes
or something - but still pretty wild.

John
http://rarebooksinjapan.org