“I would say that the single most important conclusion I reached after traveling through Japan as well as countless hours reading studying and analyzing this fascinating culture is that you should always tighten the cap on the shampoo bottle before you put it in your suitcase.”

“This is the funniest book I’ve ever held in my hands. --Dave Barry, Pulitzer Prize winning humorist and author says about Radical Sabbatical”

“I like the relaxed way in which the Japanese approach religion. I think of myself as basically a moral person, but I'm definitely not religious, and I'm very tired of the preachiness and obsession with other people's behavior characteristic of many religious people in the United States. As far as I could tell, there's nothing preachy about Buddhism. I was in a lot of temples, and I still don't know what Buddhists believe, except that at one point Kunio said 'If you do bad things, you will be reborn as an ox.'This makes as much sense to me as anything I ever heard from, for example, the Reverend Pat Robertson.”

“The reason is that you eat too many foods that are high in "calories," which are little units that measure how good a particular food tastes. Fudge, for example, has a great many calories, whereas celery, which is not really a food at all but a member of the plywood family, provided by Mother Nature so that mankind would have a way to get onion dip into his mouth at parties, has none.”

“The Hawaiian language is quite unusual because when the original Polynesians came in their canoes, most of their consonants were washed overboard in a storm, and they arrived here with almost nothing but vowels. All the streets have names like Kal'ia'iou'amaa'aaa'eiou, and many street signs spontaneously generate new syllables during the night.”

“Palestinian and Israeli leaders finally recover the Road Map to Peace, only to discover that, while they were looking for it, the Lug Nuts of Mutual Interest came off the Front Left Wheel of Accommodation, causing the Sport Utility Vehicle of Progress to crash into the Ditch of Despair.”

“When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy. ”

“Guys care about sports teams. I'm not talking about simply rooting; I'm talking about a relationship that guys develop, a commitment to a sport team that guys take way more seriously than, for example, wedding vows.”

“In the words of a very famous dead person, 'A nation that does not know its history is doomed to do poorly on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.”

“Never assume that the guy understands that you and he have a relationship.”

“Life is anything that dies when you stomp on it.”