ABROAD IN JAPAN: TEN YEARS IN THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN
By Chris Broad
Penguin, Rs 599
Many readers might not be familiar with Chris Broad, even though it is easy to come across his rather gaudy YouTube thumbnails. But if, before turning these pages, readers expect Abroad in Japan to be in the league of Hokkaido Highway Blues or The Only Gaijin in the Village — a travelogue and a dense philosophical treatise, respectively — they may be disappointed.
Abroad in Japan is neither of these. It begins rather slowly, much like how Chris’s life is upon arriving in the tiny, rural town of Sakata. The culture shock that the protagonist experiences is somewhat compensated by his tantalising experiences with North Japanese cuisine, which can make readers crave for yakitori. However, Chris would soon confront bullying — seemingly embedded in Japanese culture — an issue that occupies much of the first half of the book. His students bully him about his weight and his language; one of his bullied students even ends up attempting suicide.
In his desperate efforts to learn the Japanese kanjis, Chris’s self-deprecating humour, such as his funny one-liners, go amiss. Mercifully, the second half — packed with events — is far more compelling. Homeless and adrift in Osaka, Chris stumbles upon a chance to make a documentary about Japanese culture. From here, stories with diverse themes — a city with a cat as its stationmaster, an impromptu response to an air raid that made Chris an internet sensation, an earthquake that crashed his newly-minted office — cram the narrative.
Thankfully, Chris, a foreigner living in Japan, does not spend his time fetishising or pitying the ‘Other’; instead, he deeply reflects on Japanese culture. Hearteningly, he remains refreshingly open to experiences. From teaching swear words to his Japanese colleagues to meeting Ken Watanabe, arguably Japan’s biggest star and philanthropist who helped rebuild parts of Japan after the tsunami, Chris’s decade-long stint in another land is memorable and witty.
