These essays teach vocabulary for home furnishings (futons, beds, tables, desks, chairs, and shelves) and flooring. Two essays explore the alcove known as a tokonoma. You'll also learn the figurative meanings of "putting away bedding" and "flipping over a table." Beyond that, you'll discover terms for "clinical," "power struggle," "barbershop," "putting plans on ice," "position of authority in a government or company," and "hotbed of crimes," even delving into matters of floor area, dentures, air circulation, windfalls, faultfinding, Bon offerings to ancestors, trellises, hospital size, theater stages, a Guinness world record, round-table conferences, and dining platforms across rivers.

With these four kanji, you can lose yourself: You can put your heart and soul into pursuing a goal. You can become so passionate that you're obsessed. You can become intoxicated by an onsen or fascinated by music—even drunk on your own charms. You can admire a teacher so much that you're hopelessly devoted. Is all of this positive or negative? On the plus side, a fanatical mindset enables you to create elaborate things, feel deeply, commit fully, and master skills. On the minus side, you will likely annoy others as you slide into monomania and perfectionism!

The Japanese accessorize in ways that no one else does. Find out about shoes made of rice straw or wood, umbrellas made of paper and oil, and handheld fans in the military. Then there's the figurative take on these items, including expressions about sheltering children, inciting people, padding numbers, and wearing two hats (but in Japan they're shoes!). The shapes of umbrellas, folding fans, and straw sandals have also sparked people's creativity; see what the Japanese perceive as having similar silhouettes!

Collars, hats, and sleeves can help you make bold fashion statements. These essays show how the Japanese have accomplished that with both traditional clothing and Western styles. Figurative takes on these four kanji astonish even more. Collars are associated with heart-to-heart talks. Hats help you say that you admire someone. The foot of a mountain is figuratively its hem. As such, 裾 can represent "extent of something" and "outskirts," even symbolizing the edge of a coral reef. And sleeves are connected with leaders, passivity, coldness to people, and destiny, plus the wings of buildings, stages, and desks.

Land encircles water in various ways, and each essay in this collection spotlights a different shape of that sort: (1) an elongated body of water that's parallel to the coast and set off by islands or reefs, (2) a narrow place where the sea comes a long way into the land, (3) a circular atoll that is the rim of an extinct underwater volcano, and (4) a portion of ocean partly enclosed by land. These essays focus on famous places (e.g., Niigata, Edo, and Taiwan), explaining how those names connect to certain bodies of water.

Japan boasts a complex coastline, and as these essays show, that's for better and for worse. The numerous capes jutting out into the sea have caused disastrous shipwrecks, one of which exposed inequity that sparked outrage in Japan. But this island nation also abounds in winding beaches, and those gentle curves have influenced the designs of everything from pottery and furniture to family crests. The endpoints of the main islands beckon to tourists who want to visit the southernmost point, for instance. The outline of one cape as seen from space even gave rise to a popular song.

These four essays enable you to grouse about having too little. Perhaps you receive a pittance of a salary; both 蚊 and 涙 will help you express disappointment and anger about that, but you'll be talking about an animal's tears, not your own. Or maybe you live in a dime-sized space; if so, 狭 will let you complain that your abode feels crowded and cramped. Alternatively, you might gripe that your garden is tiny; calling it as small as a cat's (猫) forehead will get that point across.

Donald Richie said the Japanese perceive their nation as small (though it's not) because they feel it's gross to be large. Indeed, an affection for itty-bitty things runs through these essays. The prefix 豆- characterizes tiny books, small dolls, and trivia as "miniature." With 掌 the Japanese describe books as "palm-sized" and stories as "very short." The prefix 姫- indicates that a Chinese crabapple is adorably petite or that an animal is diminutive. And with 零 as "small" one can lament the loss of mom-and-pop bakeries and offer advice to small business owners engaged in David-versus-Goliath battles.