Every now and then, I like to read some manga. However, for a foreigner like me, it's kind of difficult sometimes because each page has like 5 or 6 cubes or "panels" (not sure what the exact term is), and they're all over the place in terms of order of events, as opposed to here in the states where comic cubes tend to be left-to-right and top-to-bottom in a more linear, straightforward fashion. Can anyone here tell me why Japanese manga is written and drawn in such an odd way?

As someone I once saw pointed out regarding this point.

" Its their language. They have been reading
that way for centuries. We arent the only people in this world that have a different way of reading. "

In a nutshell really! Because we (those of us who do read left to right) are more accustomed to our own style of reading doesn't neccessarily mean that the rest of the world does the same. The same would go with comics/manga

It's not only the manga. All books, magazines, student's books and even some newspapers are read the opposite way. My mom has an old Japanese calculator that's with a cover which opens the opposite way. That's just their way of reading /and even writing was from the top right corner all the way to the bottom of the page, BUT this was in the past/. Don't you think western way of reading is odd for Japanse?

No, the "western way of reading" isn't odd for the Japanese. This is for two main reasons:

1) Japanese can also be read left-to-right as western languages are and this style of writing is actually more common in modern Japan than vertical writing.

2) English part of compulsory education in Japan, so the majority of Japanese people are capable of reading English (which, of course, is read from left-to-right) to a certain degree.

However, for a westerner that has never been exposed to a writing system that features vertical writing, it can seem very strange to see this in Japan and in Japanese materials such as manga.