The Nipponese look more American than Americans. Middle-class prosperity is lapidary; the flow of cash rounds and smooths a person like water does riverbed stones. The goal of all such persons seems to be to make themselves cuddly and nonthreatening. The girls in particular are unbearably precious, although perhaps Randy just thinks so because of that troublesome neurological hookup between his brain and Little Man ’tate. The old folks, instead of looking weathered and formidable, tend to wear sneakers and baseball caps. Black leather, studs, and handcuffs-as-accessories are the marks of the powerless lower classes, the people who tend to end up in the pokey in Manila, and not of the persons who actually dominate the world and crush everything in their path.