> Personally, I think "Shogun" is a great book - "Tai-pan" too...
> .."King Rat" I wasn't enamoured with, though.
>
> But I think I should just add that another source of Japanese is being overlooked here - computer games...
>
> Mind you, you only ever really learn how to challenge people to fights that way...

When I was in Japan, I used a word learned right here at Rinkworks to make myself understood to a taxi driver in Izu-kogen. If flyingcats and some other people in Rinkchat hadn't been using the word "neko" (cat) all the time, and if the place where I was staying wasn't within walking distance of a bizarre building advertising itself to be a Cat Museum, I would most likely now be some kind of flying-Dutchman ghostly figure of The Lost Foreigner, still hanging around outside Mt Omura sleeping under the entrance to the chairlift and living off vending-machine fried squid candy and Bikkle. You never can tell when even the most random knowledge will become vital.

Brunnen-"mmm...Bikkle"G