Tune in Tokyo
by Tim Anderson
AmazonEncore (e-book)

To dismiss this book simply because others have done better would be churlish. Tune in Tokyo: the Gaijin Diaries describes two years spent in Japan by 30-year-old Tim Anderson, who left an English teaching job in North Carolina for Tokyo. The usual misunderstandings and culture clashes are described with humour as Anderson sees what guidebooks instruct him to see. As an English teacher working up to 30 hours in classrooms, he is never short of material about unintentionally funny language mistakes. And he includes his own and friends' Japanese blunders, all of which have an innocent charm. Where Anderson's take on Tokyo differs from others is describing it from the perspective of a gay man: a welcome find, in the form of a gay bookshop, leaves him frustrated when he discovers that an expensive American magazine he has bought has had the best bits scratched out. Then there's the Roppongi club he visits that is decorated with giant photos of vaginas - 'every gay man's nightmare'. Recommended, but probably only to young first-timers to Tokyo.