This book is not about cycling, but it is. It's not about Japan, but it is. It's not about sightseeing, but it is. In short, this book is about six months of someone's life -- a journey. As with all journeys, it begins with uncertainty and ends in reward. It may inspire you. If it does nothing more, this adventure will have achieved more than I ever imagined.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
In May 2005, Leigh Norrie left his house and went on a bike ride... to the rest of Japan. After a lonely and grueling six months, he'd pedaled 10,000 kilometers through every prefecture, all 41, north to south. On the way he kept a diary of his remarkable odyssey, now published as his first book, Japan 6,000 Miles on a Bicycle; and dedicated the proceeds to his chosen charity: the Chi-ki Children s Foundation. Norrie s mesmeric account of the people and places he encounters uses two classic themes: the diary and the road trip. Unlike many modern travel memoirs there are no tales of gunfights, car-chases, life-or-death poker games, or elicit encounters. His book is more reminiscent of Steinbeck's adorable Travels with Charley, with everyday folk as the cast, and customariness fused with Japan s singular idiosyncrasies making for an exceptionally enticing script. Never snobby, often judgmental, but always frank, Norrie peppers Japan with a brutal insight that meanders between outrage and kindness. Not since Alan Boothe s Roads To Saga has Japan been scoured with such objectivity, anger and affection. Diaries have made a comeback of late, yet their value has always been priceless. The pivotal events of mid-1600s London were encapsulated in the jottings of one man: Samuel Pepys. Reading Che Guevara s last diary, you scream at the annals of history, Get rid of those amateurs! And studying the French Revolution would be oh-so-boring without Restif De La Bretonne s reports on Paris after dark. About 400 years from now and Norrie s writings will most certainly evoke a kaleidoscope of reaction and retort. The keen observations of a peripatetic gaijin, part L Ingenu, part veteran, is a message in a bottle floating toward the historians of the future. Read it, write what you will, and bury your copy. Norrie also unintentionally takes his passengers, the reader, on the journey eventually pedaling with him, you can t help but egg him on, hoping he can tough it out to Naha. While the book highlights the paradoxes inherent in Nippon, its everyday nature leaves you with another you feel closer than ever to the Japanese, but equally just as alienated, just as exasperated, depressingly unable to unlock what makes this place tick and what with the puncture just before the finish line, you, like Norrie are always so close, but yet so very, very far... TFM caught up with the cyclist, writer, poet, Welshman, fundraiser and role model, in his location of choice a grotty British pub. Norrie cuts a great protagonist with his Revolver haircut, tweed jacket and smoldering bine. He could have just walked off any number of film sets: young college professor, some Beatnik from the Village, the counter-revolutionary about to plunge off the Left Bank. Is this arty type really the heroic man of steel who risked life and limb and endured six months of gluteal anguish to raise money for Laotian orphans? Can I just check your gaijin card to make sure you are in fact the real Leigh Norrie? (Confusion... Followed by wallet... Back to confusion) Usually only people under orders of Imperial edict go to the compass points and report back, so where did the idea come from? Drinking with the musician, Bob Arnold. He brought up Alan Booth s walk from Hokkaido to Saga in Kyushu. My heart started pounding I had to do it. From then, it evolved into two wheels and more mileage. Have never liked walking, or camping... or cycling... but always adventure. What is your connection to Chi-ki? I've known Sylvia since 2001. I always admired what she did in 2003: threw herself into the unknown for a few weeks and returned with 3,000 kids to look after. That takes a lot of guts. Here are children who have the absolute bare minimum, and get on with life the best they can. We truly are blessed. .............. --Tokyo Families Magazine, June 2008
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Travel Books? Not usually,
By
This review is from: Japan - 6,000 miles on a bicycle (Paperback)
Let me just start by saying that I review this having jsut read the sole review that was posted at the time of writing. I too would not have been happy if I had purchased this book to help me plan a cycling tour of Japan. But, having read the synopsis this would not be the book I bought for the planning of that activity! In fact I would not have bought the book at all if it were a travel guide book, lonely planet do it so much better.
Now, i am most certainly not the travel book kind of person, they are usually about places someone else is interested in, written by people who concentrate only on the scenery and not how they feel, but most importantly I always feel they are written by people I'm never likely to meet, nor would indeed want to. This book is different, it's written by a seemingly normal guy. the type of guy who likes a pint, like a smoke, likes his music and then just suddenly decides to ride a bike around Japan. The kind of guy you meet in any bar, club or football ground. It's personal, funny, sad, triumphant and yet somehow it seems to leave the reader with a strnage sense of trepidation all through the book. The trepidation that the writer is terrified that this step out of his usual life cycle will end. It reads like a novel, not some dull trawl around some foreign place. Beers, love hotels, near misses with trucks, pretty girls, homeless folks and more beer. not an ounce of tea and sympathy. No ego, just a bloke, doing what he usually does, but outside of his fishpond struggling to put his bleedin tent up in the rain. This should be read, it truly shows that we are not always what we see ourselves as being, that we can step out and still be ourselves. ut it also made me feel that stepping out coes with a price, the price that you pay when you have to step back into your own pond. Buy it. Read it.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Rather poor,
This review is from: Japan - 6,000 miles on a bicycle (Paperback)
Since I'm preparing for a bicycle tour of Japan myself, I bought this book for a whooping 30 USD from Amazon. After reading an article about it on japanprobe.com I had moderately high expectations about it's usability for my own tour.
To make a long story short: This book was a total waste of money for me. Poorly written with an absurdly bad typographic layout (no hyphenation). Offering no practical advice whatsoever for anyone attempting something similar. This is a travel diary of a foreigner who, despite having lived in Japan for several years lacks a decent understanding of culture and language and drinks himself through 6000 miles on rainy roads while being hungover most of the time. As entertaining as this may sound, it is not. Mainly because of Norries lack of writing skills and his lofty poems scattered throughout the book. No resolution at the end, no aftermath, nothing. As a blog this would have maybe been something worth looking at from time to time but not as printed matter. I highly respect Mr. Norries effort and it has certainly been a great project for him personally but there is no value in sharing this with the world unless it carries either some sort of practical advice (route planning, biking in Japan in general...) or at least an aesthetically pleasing language.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
