Japan Took the J.A.P. Out of Me
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Six days after an InStyle-worthy wedding in Los Angeles, Lisa Fineberg Cook left behind her little red Jetta, her manicurist of ten years, and her very best friend for the land of the rising sun. When her husband accepted a job teaching English in Nagoya, Japan, she imagined exotic weekend getaways, fine sushi dinners, and sake sojourns with glamorous expatriate friends. Instead, she's the only Jewish girl on public transportation, and everyone is staring. Lisa longs for regular mani/pedis, valet parking, and gimlets with her girlfriends, but for the next year, she learns to cook, clean, commute, and shop like the Japanese, all the while adjusting to another foreign concept -- marriage. Loneliness and frustration give way to new and unexpected friendships, the evolution of old ones, and a fresh understanding of what it means to feel different -- until finally a world she never thought she'd fit into begins to feel home-like, if not exactly like home.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her debut memoir, Beverly Hills native Cook takes an honest look at the life of a young, privileged, Jewish woman who relocates to Japan with her new (American) husband, leaving the life she knows behind-largely spent out with friends, shopping, eating, or abusing nail salons and spas. Suddenly, she's immersed in a world she doesn't understand, from the language to the housework to the friendships. Much is made of her severed relationship with her best friend Stacey, but before long, Cook lands some teaching jobs, meets friendly co-workers and a few enthusiastic students, and finds her relationship with her new husband blossoming. Through her struggles, Cook offers a genuinely funny and honest fish-out-of-water narrative without ever veering into broad or tone-deaf territory (not after the title, anyway).
