Bruce Rutledge

This book is a collection of short to very short (from 1 to 20 pages, usually exactly 10) stories about people living in Japan, mostly foreigners but also from Japanese authors writing in English (and for some reason, extracts from a book written and published in Japanese).
It's a fast read and as the preface warns, it "brought together a group of writers - a mix of Westerners and Japanese - who probably wouldn't even get along if they were stuck in the same room". Which also means, as a reader you'll probably like some stories a lot and then want to throw the book away when reading others...
Well, at least it happened to me.

Positive first:
For me, the priceless element of this book was the humour. Some stories were written almost like a stand up comedy sketch, some had only sudden sparks of it in tongue-in-cheek comments, but it was worth the read and made me laugh. Stories in that category include my favorite of all: Life with a Bilingual Dog, by Robert Juppe; in which a foreigner gains instant fame (and shame) because of his new dog, Answers to Correspondents (Cal Ranson), Canned Coffee, and Lunch Break (both by David Cady).

There was also a not funny at all but very important story about domestic violence in Japan and a woman who devotes her "retired" life to help victims by founding shelters ; that story is A Very Happy Life, by Takehiko Kambayashi.

And then, there is the story that made me understand one reason why this was being published: the publisher's own account of a very bad work experience at a company that is not named but hinted to in such precise terms, if you don't guess what he's talking about, you haven't lived in Japan. I thought OOOOOOHHH, so this is a REVENGE book! Made me feel like I should kind of do the same with the awful awful company I gave four precious years of my life to...

Let's get to the negative...
This is my review and my opinion, so what I hated, you might LOVE. But I want to warn you anyway.
Surprisingly for a book focusing on foreigners' experience of Japan, there is not much whining about Japanese society as a whole (you know, swooping generalizations...), which is great! Except for Sharon Moshavi's two essays, one called "Groped" but not really about groping or sexual harassment, the other about trash and how she feels violated by her neighbours obsession for her trash. She's not wrong, thought.

One big question mark for me was why were 3 parts of an already published Japanese book focusing on women stuck in unhappy marriages and cheating on their husband. Actually, the 3 stories were almost identical and to be honest I felt they were put there not so much to express anything about Japanese women's view on marriage, infidelity, life choices, etc. but rather as (foreigner) male fantasies; the first story even focuses on a woman suddenly deciding to ask a blue-eyes foreigner to "take her" in a hotel room while she is pregnant of her Japanese husband (later follows a scene where she is "having sex" while changing a diaper, but as a woman I would rather say: he is penetrating her while she is changing a diaper...). The 2nd and 3rd stories translated feature two other unhappy married women, blaming themselves and cheating or working in the sex industry. The women in these stories are never depicted as strong, independent and making their own choices, but rather as the title implies, "That Floating Feeling", as lost little creatures riddled with guilt after serving as receptacles to men who don't really care about them more than their husband does...
It's a pity that these stereotypes about Japanese women being sexual but self-effacing and Japanese men being bad husbands are still being put out there for Western (men) to congratulate themselves...

That's not the only thing that made me feel this book is very much male-reader-oriented. There is a whole story recalling in details one guy's "experiment" at visiting every kind of sex industry he can find, and being paid money to write about it in a magazine (and the "irony" of it is that his wife gave him the contact for this job but doesn't know what the job is... I guess this story was supposed to go in the "funny" section, but it wasn't to me). I felt a bit out of place reading this a few pages away from the true account of shelters for victims of domestic violence...
And as if that was not enough, there are still more "jokes" about it in the glossary of the book, because hey, it's really helpful to know how to ask in Japanese for a blow-job, right?

So yup, as you can see, there are many types of stories in this book. You'll probably find something you like, but you'll probably have to skip some parts (or roll your eyes a lot) if you are not a white heterosexual man.… (meer)

This is a miniature coffee table book, less than 7 inches square, beautifully made as are all Chin Music Press Books I have seen. Each pair of pages contains one line of text and one hazy photograph conceived and composed by the author using a variety of toy houses, cars, trucks and people, to convey the essence of her family's retreat from and return to New Orleans as a result of Hurricane Katrina. (One blurber called it "a children's book for grown-ups", and that is quite apt.) It's effective, but the lack of focus in the camera technique gets a little stale by the end. One or two of the pictures remain incomprehensible to me after several attempts at interpretations. Others are quite evocative. I admire what the author did here, I applaud the publisher for putting it out, and as an object this book is gorgeous. But I wouldn't urge you all to go spend $18.00 on it, unless you're a photography buff, a collector of all things New Orleans-related, or just feel like contributing to the survival of groovy small presses like Chin Music.… (meer)