First book of the year! WHOOT!
I appreciate the candor in which Ms. Paine writes. I also appreciate her honesty when it came to how difficult it was for her to adjust to life in Japan. There are just so many things to have in mind as a foreigner, so many different ways to offend or make someone uncomfortable, that unless you studied it or read about it, you wouldn't have the faintest idea of what you did wrong. I also liked that she didn't paint a rosy colored picture of her life abroad. She put her whole experience on paper. Warts and all.
That said, the book is not terribly entertaining. I found myself dropping it in favor of other things like coloring or watching something on Netflix.
I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to get a real taste of the office culture and life of a bookworm-ish foreigner in Japan. Other than that, it's highly melancholic, sad and not what I would call a fun read so you've been warned.
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