Customer Reviews

Guidebook to Japan: What the other guidebooks won't tell you

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I bought this book as soon as it was available. I read it from cover to cover and enjoyed it immensely. It is definitely "not your typical" Japan guidebook. Instead of listing hotels and restaurants it helps with the everyday things people will encounter in Japan and how to laugh at them instead of finding them frustrating. It made me laugh again at things I encountered when traveling in Japan. I loved the book. It's the only travel book I have ever read from cover to cover.

I really love this author--she's hilarious. I've been reading her column in The Japan Times for years now. I think this is a perfect traveling companion book. It's got a lot of bits and pieces in it to help you out in certain situations. In part it's a language translation book and in part tells you what's expected of you in certain places. I think it would be a great read before you leave for Japan and a great companion for when you're there. I enjoyed surfing the urls offered at the end of each chapter for more information.

I really love this author--she's hilarious. I've been reading her column in The Japan Times for years now. I think this is a perfect traveling companion book. It's got a lot of bits and pieces in it to help you out in certain situations. In part it's a language translation book and in part tells you what's expected of you in certain places. I think it would be a great read before you leave for Japan and a great companion for when you're there. I enjoyed surfing the urls offered at the end of each chapter for more information.

If you have a sense of humor and anything more than a passing interest in Japan, then this book is for you. It is a fantastic book. I have been a fan of Amy's for a long time now and this book is just as much fun as her articles. It is not a serious travel guide, though there are a healthy number of good tips in there and the urls are a great resource, but it is just flat out fun to read. Well worth your time and money.

If you are dull, politically correct, and have the intellect of a door knob, you won't like this book (aka, one reviewer as case in point).

So for those who love to laugh, appreciate wit and an educational as well as entertaining look at different culture and travel, this book is well worth your time and money. Amy Chavez does a first rate job and it shows.

One of the techniques used in the book (and in the author's weekly Japan Times columns, which the book is based upon) is to pick out mundane blobs of Japanese everyday life and to throw them against the rich cultural canvas of this in many ways still enigmatic country. They all stick - so far so good; it's been done before. However, in addition, every chapter is wrapped in some off the wall, harebrained idea like "how to identify fish according to facial expression", and the author systematically works such themes through as, in this instance, from the look of surprise on the red snapper to the battery powered electric eel.

Amy Chavez' weekly columns in the Japan Times helped me get over the rough spots of my expat assignment in Japan by making me laugh out loud upon every hit of ludicrous insight. The book is best read one or two chapters at a time, otherwise the reader is liable to overdose and wet his or her pants - but thankfully, Amy keeps the humour mostly on a super-dry level to avoid such mishaps.

I don't know how she does it, and where she comes up with her ideas week after week. Amy Chavez must be the funniest thing that happened to American literature since Mark Twain.

Humor, not a travel guide or serious help with language. Eurocentric orientalistic racist cultural imperialistic oversimplification.

Enjoy!