Japan Took the J.A.P. Out of Me [Paperback]

Lisa F Cook (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 20, 2009

Six days after an InStyle-worthy wedding in Los Angeles, Lisa Fineberg Cook left behind her little red Jetta, her manicurist of ten years, and her very best friend for the land of the rising sun. When her husband accepted a job teaching English in Nagoya, Japan, she imagined exotic weekend getaways, fine sushi dinners, and sake sojourns with glamorous expatriate friends. Instead, she's the only Jewish girl on public transportation, and everyone is staring. Lisa longs for regular mani/pedis, valet parking, and gimlets with her girlfriends, but for the next year, she learns to cook, clean, commute, and shop like the Japanese, all the while adjusting to another foreign concept -- marriage. Loneliness and frustration give way to new and unexpected friendships, the evolution of old ones, and a fresh understanding of what it means to feel different -- until finally a world she never thought she'd fit into begins to feel home-like, if not exactly like home.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her debut memoir, Beverly Hills native Cook takes an honest look at the life of a young, privileged, Jewish woman who relocates to Japan with her new (American) husband, leaving the life she knows behind-largely spent out with friends, shopping, eating, or abusing nail salons and spas. Suddenly, she's immersed in a world she doesn't understand, from the language to the housework to the friendships. Much is made of her severed relationship with her best friend Stacey, but before long, Cook lands some teaching jobs, meets friendly co-workers and a few enthusiastic students, and finds her relationship with her new husband blossoming. Through her struggles, Cook offers a genuinely funny and honest fish-out-of-water narrative without ever veering into broad or tone-deaf territory (not after the title, anyway).
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About the Author

Lisa Fineberg Cook, a self-described Jewish American Princess from L.A., leaps at the chance for an exciting adventure when her brand-new husband’s brand-new job takes them to Japan a week after they’re wed. 

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Downtown Press; Original edition (October 20, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1439110034
• ISBN-13: 978-1439110034
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #394,445 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Chronicle of a Spoilt Brat, December 3, 2009

By 

Rebecca Huston "telynor" (On the Banks of the Hudson) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Japan Took the J.A.P. Out of Me (Paperback)

Every now and then I do a bit of impulse shopping, especially when I hit the bookstore. I can't help it, it's one of my besetting vices. So when I passed by this vivid display of books, and spotted this one, about the adventures of a Jewish American Princess (the J.A.P. of the title, and a term that I loathe) in modern Japan, I thought why not? and tossed it into the basket.

Lisa Fineberg Cook starts her memoir with her marriage - a big lavish one, paid for by Mummy and Daddy, of course - to a teacher who is pretty much the opposite of her self-indulgent, rather spoilt self. Peter has accepted a teaching job in Nagoya, Japan for two years, and Lisa, naturally, isn't about to let her new spouse go traipsing off to another country by himself. But she doesn't speak the language, doesn't know the culture, and frankly, knows nearly nothing about cooking, laundry or anything else to keeping a home tidy or attractive and meals on the table and on time. She does however, know about shopping.

In each chapter of the book, she rambles on about the perils of teacher housing in Japan, coping with the people that she meets, and the reality that she is not the center of the universe. So Lisa compensates by throwing hissy fits when she doesn't get her way, makes fatal faux-pas with people that could have been her friends, and eventually settles on being a teacher in a girl's school as a way of making pin money and filling her empty hours. Along the way, the reader discovers how the Japanese are very different than the Americans by looking at public transportation, pornography (evidently it's perfectly fine to read it in public, and that there are taboos where pictures of women's private parts are concerned, but the fetishism about young girls is expected), food and adjusting to Japanese tastes, and cleaning, all within the first year of their stay in Japan.

And somehow, through all of this, Lisa seems to view being in Japan as a great trial and impossibility, mourning and wailing over the lack of her InStyle magazines, the insistence of the Japanese to do things in their own time and way, and her constant whining over the fact that she isn't in southern California with her best friend Stacie, and being on the phone to her friend nearly all of the time.

Yep, you can guess by now that I didn't have a lot of sympathy for Ms. Cook while I was reading this book. While I could see some of the humour in her situations as she fumbles her way along, I found her attitude grating and of the worst sort of the Ugly American. You know, the people who on holiday tend to carry on about how awful the food and their surroundings are and why can't everyone be like back home and speak English? Me, I tend to go native fast, view it all as an adventure, and see what I can learn along the way. What I could not understand is why her husband Peter, a man who is extremely intelligent and easy-going would put up her sniveling and manipulations for very long, but evidently he's madly in love with her, and wants to see her happy. And Lisa continues to try and control her environment and insist that everyone do it her way or else.

By the time I managed to wade through this book some two hundred and seventy five pages, I was thoroughly annoyed and bored by Lisa and Peter's story. While I certainly could admire Peter's forebearance and love and ability to put up with his childish wife, I was ready to bitch-slap Lisa through a wall. In particular I found her casual drug use and attitude of `I'm ENTITLED!' bothersome, and while I could accept it in say, a teenager (they can't help it, after all), it becomes too much when it's someone in their thirties. To prolong the agony, there is a question-and-answer session with the author at the end of the book, wherein I discovered that she hadn't changed very much in the intervening years between her time in Japan and now.

That's too bad. While Lisa does manage to get some grasp of the situation by the end of the book, I found her simply too shallow, arrogant and not that interesting to read about. Her storytelling ability is acceptable, but the level of conceit was very off-putting. The J.A.P. or Jewish-American Princess has become a stereotype in our culture, and as I stated earlier, it's one that I find detestable. Most Jewish women I know and associate with are capable, strong and compassionate women who wouldn't dream of whining their way through life, and manage quite well, thank you, especially when life gets rough and hard-going. I found Ms. Cook to be an embarrassment to read about, and she is someone that I wouldn't like to know in real life.

And that's too bad. There are other books out there that deal much better with being an American in another society and culture, and do it with humility and style. If you want to read about American women in Japan, I can happily recommend Japanland by Karin Muller, a far better memoir that pretty much goes over the same topics.

Overall, this is a book that I can not recommend. Two stars.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Pass on this one, October 29, 2009

By 

G. Smith (Jonesville, VA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Japan Took the J.A.P. Out of Me (Paperback)

This book had the potential to be great. The theme itself was interesting, however the author was absolutely insufferable and her constant self-importance completely took away from the story. I have never read a memoir by someone so entitled, vulgar, or bratty. Her behavior in Japan and animosity toward the people made her the epitome of the "Ugly American", though she tried to pass herself off as enlightened and cute.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not my kind of memoir, November 9, 2009

By 

Isabelle Rzehulka "Isabelle Rzehulka" (New York) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Japan Took the J.A.P. Out of Me (Paperback)

Had I paid more attention to the subtitle of this book - The True Story of a Domesticated Princess - I would have realized that this is chick lit rather than memoir or travelogue. And to borrow the author's voice: I don't do chick lit. I agree with a former reviewer: the topic was very promising. But readers who expect first-hand insights into Japanese culture will be disappointed. What you get, though, is some insight into L.A. girlie-lifestyle, including all treats the author suffers deprivation of while in Japan (mani/pedis, Starbucks, adequately pronounced English, et cetera). What made it hard for me to warm to her was that, apart from Japanese architecture and some food items, next to nothing could meet the heroine's approval. Nor did she undertake any (visible) effort to familiarize herself with the historical origins and evolution of the Japanese mentality that unsettled her so much. Thus, the book is an unreflecting account of personal experiences without any cultural or social context. I also quickly grew tired of the vulgar and dismissive comments (profanities like "f**k" on every other page). To the author's credit, she's not an untalented writer. This could have been good.

In short: readers who like chick lit may enjoy this book. All others: pass on it.