In 1980, I traveled through the United States just after the TV miniseries "Shogun" ended its run. Any time I mentioned to someone that I was living in Japan, he or she would invariably ask me one of two questions related to the program. One was, "Is it true that back then a samurai could chop off somebody's head just because he felt like it?" To which the answer, amazingly, was "Yes" (The word for this in Japanese is kirisute gomen).
The other question was, "Do men and women really bathe together?" To which my reply was a qualified "yes," after which a few then asked me if I had ever participated in konyoku (mixed) bathing. (My answer: "Sure, I wouldn't have missed it for the world.")
Impressionable TV audiences aside, I was reminded of another exotic view of Japan while perusing Bernard Trink's famous "Night Owl" column in the Bangkok Post of July 12.