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Mini-Review
By Amy Chavez
This is surely one of the most well-written travel books on Japan. Booth’s breathtaking prose comes as naturally as putting one foot before the other as he meanders around Japan. It’s the kind of book you read slowly, to take in all he is offering to your senses. He tells you what he sees and relates every detail vividly, without falling into surrealistic prose laden with esoteric metaphor. Where Booth’s brilliance resides is in his ability to make us feel like he’s just a regular guy, that we could be doing the same thing he is doing, but all the while wowing us with his knowledge and prose without it ever sounding over the top. His writing is rich, while never sounding contrived. In this way he is able to give the reader the same experience of wandering down a path, and getting to know Japan as he does. It’s rare to find such a comfortable read.
Another thing I liked about this book is that, while the stories are about his treks around Japan, he never focuses too much on himself. It’s always about Japan and it’s history and customs, and what gems will reveal themselves around the next bend. Booth doesn’t even tell us why he originally came to Japan until page 362! That’s how much he doesn’t want to dwell his own ego, and how he directs the reader to focus on Japan the country, rather than on Japan the inscrutable.
Booth is a rock solid writer. He employs myriad writing techniques in this book, and rarely ever repeats one. That’s impressive and what makes each page, and each chapter, as fresh as the one before it. Alan Booth is truly one of Japan’s classic ex-pat writers.
Note: This book is only available in print, thus the links on the left are to Amazon only. If you’re looking for an e-book, try Alan Booth’s acclaimed The Roads to Sata: A 2,000 mile walk through Japan available as an ebook via Amazon or Apple Books.