Two Japanese gentlemen walk by you, talking and gesticulating excitedly in their native tongue. So do three nattily dressed French women. A man from Kalamazoo, Mich., converses in equally indecipherable business-eze on his cellular telephone. What is such a diverse lot of people doing in the middle of rural North Carolina? The answer is shopping for some of the most meticulously crafted and reasonably priced (some times) furniture in the western world.