Order the freshest fugu, survive a karaoke session and know how deep to bow. Go beyond the shrines, sushi and subway and discover Japan through its language and people.

Despite numerous attempts by linguistic researchers, Japanese has not been proven yet to be related to any other living language. One theory links it to the group of Altaic languages (such as Mongolian), another one singles out a Ryukyuan-Japanese language family which according to some is a sub branch of the Altaic family, but according to others the result of a cross-over between an Altaic language (like Mongolian) and an Austronesian language (like Malay).