This approachable and absorbing book offers a unique window into Japanese culture and language. Highlighting the overlooked world of the "silent majority," the housewives and mothers who are the mainstay of Japanese society, this work tells the stories of ordinary women in their own voices. An annotated translation of a Japanese bestseller, the volume explores the daily communication of Japanese women and what their words tell us about their relationships and lives in a globalized, postindustrial, yet still often male-dominated Japan.