LIFE IN RIVERFRONT is a unique case study that offers a fresh approach to ethnography because it looks at American culture as seen through the eyes of Japanese anthropologists. Every cultural anthropology student is introduced to papers on the �Nacirema,� a very foreign culture with many daily rituals and a fanaticism for cleanliness, especially as they prepare themselves for work in the morning. In truth, the �nacirema� is American (spelled backwards), and the lessons learned from seeing one�s own culture through the eyes of a �stranger� illuminate the notion of ethnocentrism in a powerful way. While a major task of anthropology is to make the strange familiar and the exotic or enigmatic understandable, another task is to make the familiar strange so that one can see one�s own culture in a new light. This case study accomplishes this and more.