

How many ways can you bow in Japan? - JacobAldridge
http://www.slate.com/id/2244063/

======
patio11
_Why is the car company called Toyota, if its founding family goes by the name
Toyoda? The former is more auspicious. The written form of Toyota requires
eight brush strokes—as opposed to 10 for Toyoda—and eight is considered a
lucky number._

This is so comprehensively wrong I don't even know where to start. The kanji
for Toyota (豊田) and Toyoda (豊田) are identical. Bitwise identical, even. (And I
count 18 brush strokes, which leads me to think that someone thinks the
decision was between トヨタ and トヨダ, which is backwards: the pronunciation does
not get decided when you need to disambiguate for writing katakana, it gets
decided on naming, and anyone who reads 豊田自動車 as Toyoda Jidousha is _reading
it wrong_ and has been for more than eighty years now.)

Toyota Motors sometimes prefers to use the katakana version of its name (トヨタ)
in preference to the kanji, but that is basically a branding thing ("it
scarcely matters what you pick as long as it is consistent!"). They'll write
it with kanji every once in a while too, as will newspapers and the like
referring to their country. (This is very roughly similar to newspapers
referring to William Jefferson Clinton as "Bill" -- it is an acknowledged
correct name other than the canonical one.)

Other companies in the Toyota group standardize on the kanji (such as 豊田自動織機
-- Toyota Industries Corporation) or even on the romaji ("Toyota") versions.

------
ebun
Bowing is so integrated here that I don't even realize I'm doing it anymore.
It becomes second nature, and you pretty much do it before and after
everything.

Even though I don't really understand the intricacies, I can usually get-by by
overdoing it all the time. When in doubt, bow.

------
brazzy
The explanations in the articles are several decades out of date. Nowadays,
parents and schools have other focuses than the intricacies of bowing, and
companies routinely hold classes on this (and, more importantly, "keigo", the
formally polite grammar and vocabulary) for newly-hired graduates.

------
pwim
I'm reminded of <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqZcEwHBAk8>

