Maciamo
Decommissioned ex-admin
Registered: July 2002
Location: Austrasia
Posts: 6652
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Review Date: September 1, 2004
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: None indicated
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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wonderfully written, Alan Boot's huge vocabulary and attention to details, decription of a unique experience
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Cons:
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Alan Booth, an Englishman who was living in Japan from 1970 till his pemature death in 1993, decided to walk all the way from Japan's northern extremity in Wakkanai (Hokkaido) to its southern extremity in Sata (Kyushu), without using any other form of transport but his leg while on firm land (only two ferries between Honshu and Hokkaido or Kyushu). He did it at a time when foreigners were still few in Japan and most people in the remote countryside had never seen one in real.
His unique experience is not only instructive about the way Japanese welcome or reject foreigners (he was refused entry at several ryokans or minshuku because he was not Japanese, although he spoke the language fluently), but rich in geographic or object descriptions for which Booth has a real talent. He is the kind of writer that kind make the most ordinary landscape become a source of amazement.
A must-read for anyone interested in Japan.
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