I have recently been reading some of the books from the Japanese Travel Bureau 
Inc Illustrated Book Series "Japan In Your Pocket".  There seems to be 17 
small paperbacks of aprox. 190 pages on various aspects of Japanese Life and 
these may well be a useful source of background information.

The books I have read are #2 (Living Japanese Style), #8 ("Salaryman" in 
Japan), #10 (Today's Japan),  #13 (Japanese Characters), #17 Japanese Family 
and Culture).  

The series is in English, but is printed in Japan.  The chapter titles are in 
both English and Japanese (kanji not romanji). The indexes are in both English 
and Japanese.  The cover price is 950-1010 Yen each.

These books describe the Japanese life style warts and all and are an 
interesting contrast to most western travel books.  I have just read the 
"Salaryman".  Topics covered include the expected dress codes of salarymen, 
koin and OL's, commuting patterns, pressures on family life, how the company 
can take over the organisation off an employee's life (those company 
dormitories just make me shiver), how to recognise seniority (even from seat 
arrangements in a car), company sports days, holidays, business manners, 
health and even proverbs.  Some of the comments are surprising, e.g:

OL's typically have a company uniform.  However,  it is taboo for an OL to 
arrive at work in the same clothes on consecutive days as this implies that 
she did not go home for the night.

Phrases can be translated into words in English that are associated with 
totally different meanings, i.e. "Ashi o hipparu" is translated as "To pull 
someone's leg".  In the UK, I usually expect that to mean "to tease someone", 
in Japanese business usage it means "to interfere with someone's promotion or 
success."

Ewan Chrystal
Ewan_C@msn.com