Turning Japanese, by David Galef
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Turning Japanese, by David Galef
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Gou ni itte wa, gou ni shitagae, runs an old Japanese proverb: Obey the customs of the village you enter. Just don’t overdo things. It may already be too late for Cricket Collins, a recent Ivy League graduate who travels to Osaka for his first real job as an English instructor. The time is late 1970s, with Japan quickly becoming the new find-yourself region that India was to the backpack set in the 1960s. From pachinko parlors to paper cranes, tea ceremonies to translation problems, everything is entrancing to Cricket, at first, as he throws himself headfirst into a two-thousand-year-old culture. But soon he gets fired from his teaching job at Kansai Gakuin for petty theft, and on a brief trip to Korea he becomes embroiled in a sexual misadventure with painful after-effects. Spinning slowly out of orbit in his free-floating expatriate existence, he starts to lose touch with family, friends, and reality. It isn’t until he returns home to America that he begins to turn Japanese with a vengeance. Turning Japanese is as much about the allure of a foreign culture as it is about the divided existence of an expat and the terrors of ones own mind. Be careful of breaking down the barriers between two cultures: the breakdown you create may be your own.
Turning Japanese, by David Galef - Amazon Sales Rank: #2367488 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-11-10
- Released on: 2015-11-10
- Format: Kindle eBook
Turning Japanese, by David Galef From Publishers Weekly Though its general appeal is limited, Galef's second novel (after Flesh) is bound to strike a chord with the 20-somethings who, like protagonist Cricket Collins, have postponed (or have contemplated postponing) post-college life with a teaching job in another country. Cornell grad Cricket has put off law school for a year and signed on as an English instructor in Japan, but he quickly finds that life for a gaijin is more complicated than the one he has left behind. Cricket's minor misadventures?dealing with an officious cleaning lady, teaching enthusiastic but only slightly comprehending students, romancing Reiko, his Japanese girlfriend, during a lugubrious visit with her parents, even trying a Korean prostitute?fail to add up to much of a narrative. If the reader doesn't get much of an insight into Japanese culture, it's because we're stuck in the orbit of Cricket, a young man who interests himself more than he interests us. When Cricket cracks up while leading a class of businessmen in conversational English, the book spins (with its protagonist) out of control toward an unearned "tragic" ending back in the U.S., with its sad young hero still trying retrospectively to break out of his expat isolation. (Sept.) FYI: Galef, who has lived in Japan, is the author of "Even Monkeys Fall from Trees" and Other Japanese Proverbs.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal In his second novel (after Flesh, LJ 3/15/95), Galef brilliantly captures expatriate life in Japan. Cricket Collins, just graduated cum laude from Cornell in the flush late 1970s, decides to leave the United States for nine months before entering law school. Is he trying to escape his past or to create a different future from what he and his father have envisioned? Whatever his aim, he succeeds only in the latter, as his months in Japan extend into years and the pastAin the form of his dead mother; his only girlfriend, who left him; and even the jaded expat he met fleetingly on the flight overAhaunts his daily bike rides. This novel will prove inviting for anyone interested in the expat experience or in Japanese culture, but as a meditation on sanity, or on a life wasted, it falls short. Galef has captured the feeling of being betwixt and between two cultures, but Cricket never seems as crazy as he or anyone else thinks. In the last few chapters, the reader feels abandoned when the viewpoint shifts to that of Cricket's new roommate back in the States. Only Cricket and Japan have come alive in these pages, and that is not quite enough.ADoris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, INCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist Spending a year in Japan after graduating from Cornell in the late 1970s was Cricket Collins' plan. But the year stretched to almost five because it was all so seductive: the work (teaching conversational English) was plentiful and profitable; the controlled society (which allowed foreigners a certain latitude) was appealing; and he liked the food. Increasingly immersed in a culture so different from his own, Collins eventually fits in neither. The problem with viewing the expatriate experience through the lens of this protagonist is that Collins is less than stable to begin with. He grew up solitary, the only child of a mother who died when he was nine and a distant father, and in Japan he commits acts of petty theft, hears--and answers--voices in his head of persons living and dead, and finally shouts insults at his students. So it is no surprise that his story turns dark. Interesting from a cross-cultural standpoint but ultimately lacking uplift. Michele Leber
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. You too can turn Japanese! By hoflich@jade.dti.ne.jp A "just-about-as-accurate-as-it-gets" account of a young man who comes to Asia to fight off the post-graduation blues, discover himself, and get away from the baggage of home. Main character Cricket Collins comes over on a teaching internship, loses his job, finds a new one, gets over his culture shock and actually learns something about Japan. He picks up a nice girl, somehow remains faithful to her, then tries to sort out his life as he acclimatizes to his new world. I found this book quite accurate in its depictions of the "foreign ghetto" of English teachers in Japan, namely the nutty types that end up here as well as the types of situations that they get into. Some of Cricket's experience mirrored mine in an eerie way, none less than the fact that he ended up living in the same town that I do! The author's style is satisfying and reads well, and he renders the language of Japanese characters in the book quite comfortably for the most part - something that would be quite tricky for someone who hasn't lived for a long time in Japan to do. Trips to Korea, China, and New York highlight the book and keep it interesting. With the last chapter of the book, the author veers wildly in his intent and changes the course of the novel drastically by dealing with the Cricket's ideosyncracies quite directly - I am pretty sure I understand what he was trying to do and find it quite amazing, a rare effort in the field of literature and I admire his dedication to his vision although it may give other readers whiplash. A new second-to-last chapter set in America could have softened the blow, but I'm not really complaining. This book has probably only been read by five or six people, a real shame.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. The best expatriate-in-Japan book ever! By A Customer Forget Bicycle Days, forget Ransom, this is the only novel that captures what it is *really* like to live as an expatriate in Japan. I've lived in Japan for over 8 years and believe me, this is the only one that gets it right. Galef has created the archetype for the disillusioned English teacher in Japan and his name is Cricket Collins. Don't read that horrible Dave Barry Does Japan book, read this. Highly entertaining and informative. Buy one for all your friends who are thinking about living in Japan.@
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