Thursday, January 11, 2007

The Blue Eyed Salaryman

Just finished one of our Christmas presents. If I was thinking of writing a book based on our bizarre experiences in Japan, it's certainly put paid to that idea. There's no point - it's already been done, and done rather well. The book is the story of an Irishman who worked at Mitsubishi in Japan. Of course the details are different but overall it was scarily similar to our own experiences here. And based on the reviews on its Amazon page, there are a lot more out there who feel the same!

So, if you want to find out what life is like as a salaryman in Japan, you can save yourselves the trouble of working here for a few years and just read the book. It's well-written and makes a nice antidote to Charisma Man and the overly cute "Life in Japan" columns in the Japan Times.

4 comments:

EliRabett said...

There is also some literature about the reverse, asians in the west. Chiang Yee is particularly well known for this (we have some of his illustrations of Oxford). Your bringing this up, caused me to look if the book was in print, and indeed it is and we just bought one.

On the other hand you may find this pseudo inversionthis amusing. It was quite famous in its time.

Anonymous said...

Hi James

My google-alerter pointed me to your site. Many thanks for reading (and enjoying) my book! Also thanks for the trove of mountain and restaurant info on your personal home page.

best

Niall (ex-salaryman)

Luboš Motl said...

I hope that your Japanese is very good so that you can read the best Japanese blog in the world.

Luboš Motl said...

Interesting. The link automatically redirects to the English translation. OK, you must click the Japanese flag to get to the Japanese blog. ;-)