Product Description
The "Memoirs of a Geisha" have faded and "The Last Samurai" has left the building. Modern Tokyo is a lurid city populated with insane cops and murderous yakuza. In Crazy Noise, Mark Bossingham paints the underside of a megatropolis that has shed any pretense at civility and fallen into the grip of avarice and violence.
From a review by W.E. Evans:
I like to pick up books set in Japan. I usually begin with the same sort of wilted, battered hope that I felt when ordering pizza in Tokyo: Maybe, despite many disappointments, this will be the good one.
I never found a good pizza in Tokyo, but Crazy Noise ended my long march through the desert of crappy, goofy writing about Japan. No western-guy-falls-in-love-with-gorgeous-Asian-babe. No cherry blossoms. No westerners learning the tea ceremony so well they become Matcha-sensei.
What you do have is a high-octane rip through the Tokyo that is ignored by or unknown to many Japanese, much less the usual American on a 6-month visa to research and write about "the real Japan." Crazy Noise boasts a crowd of crooked cops, sleazy real-estate moguls, gangsters and all-around bad apples that would do Damon Runyon proud -- but this ain't New York. Tokyo has its own way of doing things, and Bossingham's laid it out for anyone who's up for the ride. Who knew a whiff of a city's most objectionable aspects could be so refreshing?
From a review by W.E. Evans:
I like to pick up books set in Japan. I usually begin with the same sort of wilted, battered hope that I felt when ordering pizza in Tokyo: Maybe, despite many disappointments, this will be the good one.
I never found a good pizza in Tokyo, but Crazy Noise ended my long march through the desert of crappy, goofy writing about Japan. No western-guy-falls-in-love-with-gorgeous-Asian-babe. No cherry blossoms. No westerners learning the tea ceremony so well they become Matcha-sensei.
What you do have is a high-octane rip through the Tokyo that is ignored by or unknown to many Japanese, much less the usual American on a 6-month visa to research and write about "the real Japan." Crazy Noise boasts a crowd of crooked cops, sleazy real-estate moguls, gangsters and all-around bad apples that would do Damon Runyon proud -- but this ain't New York. Tokyo has its own way of doing things, and Bossingham's laid it out for anyone who's up for the ride. Who knew a whiff of a city's most objectionable aspects could be so refreshing?
