"I never really did get accustomed to all the bowing. According to the guidebooks, there's an elaborate set of rules governing exactly how you bow, and who bows the lowest, and when, and for how long, and how many times, all of this depending on the situation and the statuses of the various bowers involved. Naturally, my family and I, being large, ignorant foreign water buffaloes, were not expected by the Japanese to know these rules. Nevertheless, we did feel obligated to attempt to return bows when we got them. This happened quite often. It started when we arrived at our hotel in Tokyo. As I was descending the steps of the airport bus, two uniformed bellmen came rushing up and bowed to me. Trying to look casual but feeling like an idiot, I bowed back. I probably did it wrong, because then they bowed back. So I bowed back. The three of us sort of bowed our way over to where the luggage was being unloaded, and I bowed to our suitcases, and the bellmen, bowing, picked them up and rushed into the hotel. We followed them past a bowing doorman into the hotel, where we were gang-bowed by hotel employees. No matter which direction we turned, they were aiming bows at us, sometimes from as far as twenty-five yards away. Bobbing like drinking-bird toys, we bowed our way to the reception desk, where a bowing clerk checked us in."