A Gaijin's Guide to Japan
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Book Description
An alternative look at Japanese culture, history and life.
Product Description
An alternative look at Japanese life, history and culture
Your Rough Guide or Lonely Planet book can tell who where to stay or what to see, but how do you really get under the skin of Japan? In this book Ben Stevens explores the serious and the frivolous, the history and the obsessions of a fascinating nation.
Taking an A-Z walk through Japanese culture, A Gaijin's Guide To Japan looks at everything from akachochin bars to chikan (the weird blokes who touch you up on trains), geisha, inari shrines, karaoke, omikuji (sacred lottery) and ending up at zen. With a fair sprinkling of celebrity mentions - from David Beckham to soap opera star Yong-sama - and handy guides to kanji and sushi this is the perfect book for the Japanophile in all of us.
Ideal for readers planning a visit to Japan but also to armchair fans of Japanese culture.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The book is an introduction to many different aspects of Japan, arranged in an A-Z format, from Sada Abe to Zen. Topics covered range from mythology to culture to etiquette to politics (thanks to Mr Stevens for reminding me of Tokyo's eccentric governor, Shintaro "French people can't count" Ishihara). It's a fun and informal read which never goes too deeply into any subject, although you could use it as a springboard for some Googling if you want to get a bit more in depth. It's a good capsule picture of life in Japan, and great for dipping into.
It's not all perfect - the copyediting is a bit sloppy, and the humour can be hit and miss, but the best thing I can say about this book is that I wish I'd had a copy before I moved to Tokyo. At the time all I could find were travel guides and dry treatises on the correct angle to bow at when handing over a business card (also covered here!), and this book would have been great when trying to settle into a strange new city.
It's not all perfect - the copyediting is a bit sloppy, and the humour can be hit and miss, but the best thing I can say about this book is that I wish I'd had a copy before I moved to Tokyo. At the time all I could find were travel guides and dry treatises on the correct angle to bow at when handing over a business card (also covered here!), and this book would have been great when trying to settle into a strange new city.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
The books pretty interesting as a short A-Z of interesting Japanese topics, unfortunately the Kindle version is a poorly formatted (non UTF-8) HTML file, so any Japanese characters and kanji come out as jibberish.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I rented A Gaijin's Guide to Japan from the local library.
It's actually a really good book with some useful information contained within it. It's formatted in an A-Z style with lots of emphasis on culture and beliefs and customs. I've never been to Japan to use the information contained but it looks pretty conscise. It's certainly not a reference or guide book but a supplemental book.
The writing style is light-hearted and fun. I found it quite tricky to read sometimes because of the sentence structure but that's a minor niggle really. It didn't take me long to blast through the book but I did find myself wavering in the middle. This was mainly due to the A-Z style rather than a personal story format. There's no story bringing me back. It's just references but not in a guide book style.
Other than that though I liked the book a lot and I thought the author, Ben Stevens, has written a great little read. Just don't rely on it for all your facts for Japan. Also - was not impressed to find no mention section on Bento (obento).
For the price it's on at Amazon it's definitely worth a punt.
Rob..
It's actually a really good book with some useful information contained within it. It's formatted in an A-Z style with lots of emphasis on culture and beliefs and customs. I've never been to Japan to use the information contained but it looks pretty conscise. It's certainly not a reference or guide book but a supplemental book.
The writing style is light-hearted and fun. I found it quite tricky to read sometimes because of the sentence structure but that's a minor niggle really. It didn't take me long to blast through the book but I did find myself wavering in the middle. This was mainly due to the A-Z style rather than a personal story format. There's no story bringing me back. It's just references but not in a guide book style.
Other than that though I liked the book a lot and I thought the author, Ben Stevens, has written a great little read. Just don't rely on it for all your facts for Japan. Also - was not impressed to find no mention section on Bento (obento).
For the price it's on at Amazon it's definitely worth a punt.
Rob..
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Good fun, easy read
Despite being warned that this book isn't properly formatted I bought it for my kindle as it is a mere 99p! Read more
Published 4 months ago by Sam0406
Handy book
Was looking for a guide book for a colleague who was going to Japan. This had some good reviews so I picked this one. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Hello Kitty
very funny and interesting facts
this book is light guide to Japanese culture. Packed with small stories,legends and funny incidents that happened in Japan and everyone there knows about it. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Skyhigh3
A joke that is not funny
Some bloke teaching English in Japan decides to make some extra cash by writing an A-Z about Japanese culture. A better book could have been written in two weeks. Read more
Published on 18 May 2009 by Jackal
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