religion in Japaness

I really know. For starters his brief description of Buddhism was short. His entire summary could have lasted only about five minutes, and I know that it was relatively biased (simply because of my and his Christian views) secondly it changed my perspective of Buddhism. When I think of Buddhism I imagine old men floating (that is right floating, like off the floor) above yoga mats in a temple like buildings (I don’t even know the religious term for their sacred places, do they even have sanctuaries?) with incense burning in the background. Sadly I can not even tell you what Buddhist worship looks like. I am pretty sure that in Buddhism no one is floating in midair like how I imagined. The idea that all selfish human cravings should be suppressed, and not simply controlled is not how imagined Buddhism at all. Obviously I did not know much about the religion, and that is what impressed me so much. Even knowing the surface of what Buddhists believe helped me to understand the Japanese cultural more, and their perspective.
Understanding religion is vital to understand the language, and translation. Who could have known? It makes logical sense that if you don’t believe in God, Heaven, or Hell you would not bother naming them, because they would not exist. In my civilization class we read Swift Gulliver’s Travels, and discussed the linguistic catalogs about items that the society is familiar with. An example is that Eskimos’ supposable have 52 words to describe snow. In our language we have a few, slush, snow, white stuff?, but just as there is more than one word to describe snow in English there is more than one word to describe God. He can be called: Heavenly Father, Divinity, or Celestial Being. The list goes on. In the Japanese language though there is no word to describe God, and that is almost beyond my comprehension. I wonder if Eskimos can not believe that English only uses the word Snow. I guess that language has more to do with what your society is familiar with than I ever imagined.