Here's my rule: You always want to pay cash for your own books because if they look at the name on the credit card and then they look at the name on the book jacket then there's this look of such profound sympathy for you that you had to resort to this. It really is withering.
I studied Japanese language and culture in college and graduate school and afterward went to work in Tokyo where I met a young man whose father was a famous businessman and whose mother was a geisha.
