Tokyo Vice : An American Reporter On The Police Beat In Japan by Jake Adelstein (Pantheon Books)

“Either erase the story, or we’ll erase you.  And maybe your family.  But we’ll do them first, so you learn your lesson before you die.”  An ominous beginning to a true story told by an American reporter who worked the crime beat for one of Japan’s best known newspapers – the Yomiuri Shinbun (the Japanese paper, not  its English- language equivalent) which has a circulation of more than ten million a day.

The man who threatened him was a yakuza enforcer whose boss was Tadamasa Goto – a leader of the notorious yakuza gang, the Goto Gumi--and the subject of a story Adelstein was working on.  The yakuza boss had gotten a liver transplant at the Dumont-UCLA Liver Cancer Center for which Goto allegedly spent nearly a million US dollars. Some say the amount was actually three million and that some of the money was sent from Japan to the US through a casino in Las Vegas.

Tokyo Vice

What made this a scoop to Adelstein was the question of how the man was able to get into the States.  He was on the watch list of U.S. Customs and Immigration, the FBI, and the DEA.  He was blacklisted – he should not have been able to set foot in the country.  And how did he become a priority for a liver transplant?

However given an ultimatum by Goto’s enforcer, Adelstein chose the path most of us would probably have also taken – he did not report the story.  Unfortunately, this decision would come back to haunt him.

There are a lot of books about Japan’s mafia – the yakuza, written by former yakuza members and people who have infiltrated the various gangs, including Yakuza Moon, written by the daughter of a former yakuza boss.  But Adelstein’s book isn’t just about the yakuza – it’s about the underside of Tokyo, in which the yakuza play a big part.  It’s about the Tokyo you won’t read about in any guide books.  It’s about the seamier side of life in one of the world’s biggest metropolis.

Adelstein takes us on his journey from becoming a student at Sophia (Joichi) University, to extending his studies of the Japanese language, to taking the “entrance exam” for the Yomiuri Shinbun, which is “kind of a newspaper SAT”. “If your score is high enough, you get an interview, and then another, and then another.  If you do well enough in your interviews, and if your interviewers like you, then you might get a job promise.”  Not only did Adelstein do well and pass all his interviews, apparently his interviewers liked him and told him to report for duty the following month or so.

As a cub reporter, Adelstein is first sent to Saitama Prefecture which people jokingly refer to as the New Jersey of Japan.  As he works closely with the police, he gets his feet wet by working on stories such as a juvenile using a bestselling book titled “The Perfect Manual of Suicide” for its intended purpose, a murder case of a snack-mama in Chichibu, and another murder case by a dog breeder in Saitama.  Finally, Adelstein gets transferred back to Tokyo, to Shinjuku Ward’s Kabukicho District – the Red Light Area of Tokyo where he is to work with the Tokyo Police Vice Squad.

The cases he writes about while working in Shinjuku make his Saitama stories seem mild in comparison.  One of his biggest news pieces was the Lucy Blackman story, a foreign woman who was raped and dismembered with her body parts hidden in a cave. He also wrote about the ATM thefts where the criminals would use a truck and a jackhammer and take out the entire machine in just a few minutes.  But when Adelstein uncovers the story of the nearly impotent Japanese government not doing anything about human trafficking, the book really picks up steam and reads like a non-stop thriller.

Although Japan is still safer than most countries in my opinion, it is not totally devoid of violence and crime.  And one cannot really tell the difference between a yakuza and a hard-working salaryman as the yakuza also have their hand in a lot of legitimate businesses.  It still amazes me that the yakuza can have their own businesses when the police know they’re guilty of racketeering, loan-sharking, human-trafficking, extortion and other crimes.  But still I love living in my adopted country.--Review written by Ernie Hoyt

Brothers by Yu Hua (Picador Asia)

If Mark Twain were alive and well in the twenty-first century, Huckleberry Finn would be an American version of Brothers. These books have everything in common except for the bawdy, ribald satire that fills this novel by Yu Hua.  Without the cultural restraints that hampered Mark Twain, certainly  Huckleberry would have happily joined Baldy Li in his fourteen-year-old adventure in voyeurism, peeking at female buttocks in the public toilet.

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If not for his mother's second marriage, Baldy, like Huckleberry, would have been an individualistic rascal "lighting off for the territory" alone but fate provided him with a brother. The son of Baldy's stepfather, Song Gang shares none of his new brother's gene pool but swiftly becomes his comrade in survival--and later his romantic rival.

Brothers was published in China as a work in two volumes; in the West it was presented in a single volume divided into two parts, which does not work to the novel's advantage. This is clearly two separate books with two jarringly different moods. When jammed together In one volume, what its translators describe as "subversive humor" rubs jaggedly against what they term "haunting sentimentality."  It's as though the tragic heroism found in The Grapes of Wrath was followed by the unsparing, savage satirical voice of Evelyn Waugh.

Hua's first book is haunting but far from sentimental. When Baldy's heroic stepfather is battered to death on the street during the Cultural Revolution and his son and stepson find his corpse, there is no sentimentality in the rather callous way they examine a body so disfigured that they are unable to recognize the man they both deeply love.     Even the most tender scene between the children and their father, a trip to the ocean on a moonlit night, avoids bathos by being placed between the destruction of the family's home and the imprisonment that leaves the boys to become a solid unit, depending only on each other for their survival. The violence of this turbulent period in Chinese history is accompanied by the examples of heroes--both parents of Song Gang and Baldy Li have strength and courage in epic quantities.

And then history takes a hard twist and so does this novel. With the onset of free enterprise and untrammeled wealth, heroism dissolves and so does the bond between the two brothers. Song Gang, besotted by love, becomes a uxurious fool while Baldy Li, still obsessed by his adolescent glimpse of the perfect bottom that belongs to his brother's wife, hurls himself into making money. There are no heroes in this landscape shaped by energy and greed--only successful businessmen.

And business destroys goodness in grotesque and horrible ways, stripping away the dignity that the brutality of the Cultural Revolution was unable to extinguish. Heroism is swallowed up by instant gratification and virtue is destroyed by the search for glory that only money can provide. Death in the first portion of this book was reason for deep sadness; in the second part, nobody--not even the reader--truly cares.

And as Brothers ends with Baldy Li planning to carry Song Gang's  ashes on a purchased space-shuttle ride, a scheme that he hatches while "perched atop his famously gold-plated toilet seat," the thought arises,  how would Huckleberry Finn conclude in 21st century America--on Wall Street? In a homeless shelter? Selling masculine extensions over the Internet? Or would Huck be on his way, perhaps with Baldy Li, to colonize the moon?

The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty- Year Imprisonment in North Korea by Charles Robert Jenkins (University of California Press)

“In January of 1965, twenty-four-year-old U.S. Army sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins abandoned his post in South Korea, walked across the DMZ, and surrendered to communist North Korean soldiers standing sentry along the world’s most heavily militarized border.”

There has been a bit of controversy surrounding this book in the United States, Jenkins being an army deserter and all. But how can readers not be fascinated by the story of someone who lived and managed to survive for more than forty years in the reclusive Stalinist regime of North Korea? The biggest critics seem to be those who already have their preconceived opinions about him and are probably ignorant of most of the facts surrounding his story. Take for instance, the lady who says, "I don't know why he chose to come out now if he liked it there so much." This is obviously the opinion of someone who has not read his book.

It’s an extraordinary story because it is not only about Jenkins’ army desertion.  For the forty- plus years Jenkins spent in North Korea, he says he's lived a fairly ordinary life. Perhaps he lived a little better than some of North Korea's own citizens, but that doesn't mean he's had an easy time of it. He claims he was young, drunk and stupid when he crossed the DMZ, afraid that he was going to be sent to serve in Vietnam. He didn’t realize that his decision would have him stuck in another country for the next forty years

We probably would never have heard of Jenkins if it hadn't been for Japan’s biggest news of the decade when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi met with Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang.  It was at this historic meeting that Kim Jong-il admitted to his country’s program of abducting Japanese nationals and having them serve as instructors in the Japanese language and customs at spy schools located throughout North Korea.  Unfortunately, the talks were not as productive as had been hoped because the total number of abductees could not be confirmed with North Korea maintaining that there were only thirteen, with just five still surviving. One of the survivors was a woman named Hitomi Soga, Jenkins’ wife.

Jenkins fills us in on his life in North Korea in chronological order. He tells of his surrender-- which he had believed would be a temporary condition that would lead to his being rapidly sent back to the States where he would face a short jail sentence –- to his indoctrination into the communist regime. He describes meeting and being imprisoned with other defectors (who were mostly running from the law, or as Jenkins says in his own words, “were total fuck-ups as soldiers”), people who would eventually become his closest friends and, at times, his worst enemies.  A bit of sunshine and hope is visited upon him in 1980 when he marries Soga and starts a family.

The story becomes even more interesting when Soga and a few other abductees manage to escape from the country with the help of the Japanese government).  The abductees were given permission to visit Japan and their relatives on the condition that they would return to North Korea in a couple of weeks.  Instead they formally removed the pins of Kim Jong-il (which they were required to wear) on Japanese national television and refused to go back.  And so begins a new chapter as Soga works hard to get the rest of her family out of North Korea.

Before vilifying Jenkins, one should read this story of a young man who was scared, homesick and drunk, who now admits that he made the worst decision of his life by crossing the DMZ into North Korea.  It’s an inspirational story as well as the story of making a terrible choice-- he survives, finds love, has children, and in the end, is able to leave North Korea to join his wife in Japan.  Their children, who were both born and raised in North Korea, find themselves becoming new Japanese citizens, but that will probably be the subject of another book.  ----by Ernie Hoyt

My Top Ten (Books) for the Past Ten (Years)

I read as though I'm trying to catch a virus. What I look for are books that will live inside me and haunt me when I try to sleep. I want to gobble books that will treat me as a host, gathering strength as they inhabit me, emerging when I least expect them to. When I was recently in Vientiane, I thought repeatedly of James Fenton in that city decades ago, being startled by a Prathet Laos soldier who leaped at him from behind a bush, snarling with all teeth bared. He was grateful for this, Fenton said, because finally something memorable had happened to him in Laos' capital city. When I'm in Hong Kong, I'm accompanied by the ghost of Emily Hahn, as she races around an occupied city trying to scavenge food for her imprisoned lover and their baby, and in Phnom Penh I see, beneath the chaotic development that characterizes that city today, the deserted, eerie streets that Francois Bizot describes so well in The Gate.

The books that comprise my Top Ten List for the first ten years of 2010 are books that I carry with me wherever I go. They're like a phantom limb, invisible but always present, and sentences from them echo when I think my mind is empty. Each of them explains a portion of the world to me in some way, although it sometimes takes years for me to discover precisely how they do that. They are all extremely different, with only one thing in common--they are each about a part of Asia and they each are now a part of me.

There is no attempt to establish any kind of geographic fair play in this list nor are the books listed in order of importance. (I was pleased to find when I went to Fuchsia Dunlop's blog, that The Guardian also chose Sichuan Cooking as a Top Ten of the Decade. However they chose this as one of their top ten cookery books, while I have selected it as one of my top ten books of any category. For my top ten books about Asia for 2009 only, a list can be found at http://tonedeafinbangkok.thingsasian.com/2009/12/06/outstanding-books-about-asia-2009-a-subjective-and-covetous-list/

1. Meeting Faith by Faith Adiele (Thailand-- memoir)

2. The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng (Malaysia-- novel)

3. Mandarins: Stories by Ruyunosuke Akutagawa (Japan-- short stories)

4. Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra (Mumbai--novel)

5. The Gate by Francois Bizot (Cambodia--memoir)

6. The Last Days of Old Beijing by Michael Meyer (Beijing--memoir)

7. Sichuan Cooking by Fuchsia Dunlop (China--cookbook)

8. India After Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha (India--history)

9. Red Dust by Ma Jian (China--travel memoir)

10. The Girl from the Coast by Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Java--novel)

Mandarins: Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (Archipelago)

Mandarins: Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa

Translated by Charles De Wolf (Archipelago Books)

As Basho hovers between life and death, his disciples perform the ritual act of brushing his lips with water, while their reactions to the poet’s passing range from revulsion to relief. A man prepares himself for his first murder, and the woman who is his conspirator readies herself for an unanticipated role in the killing the two have planned together. Young university graduates, on a seaside holiday before searching for jobs in Tokyo, watch young women fearlessly swimming among the jellyfish that have kept the students from plunging into the water. A saintly young man who is the protégé of Christian priests falls from grace and into penury, until an act of courage leads to his death, his redemption, and the revelation of the shadow world that he had made his own.

The characters in this collection of brief and haunting stories are poised between actions, where Ryunosuke Akutagawa examines them as though they were butterflies impaled on the pointed ends of pins. Each story is a carefully constructed world of sadness and a kind of hopeless beauty, which is precisely described in spare and graceful sentences. They linger and tease and disturb; they inhabit their readers in ways that are not always comfortable. They are quite possibly addictive.

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The temptation to look at many of these stories as being an autobiographical glimpse of Akutagawa is great, especially since two of the most revealing, Cogwheels and The Life of a Fool, which explore the inner workingsof a tortured mind, both appeared just before he died of an overdose of veronal in 1927. What they do reveal is Akutagawa’s thoughts about his country after its rush from isolation to modernity, and in the beginning of its expansion before World War Two. The Garden, with its examination of tradition altered and destroyed, its “undeniable intimation of impending ruin,”clearly shows the author’s distaste for the changes that Japan went through during his lifetime.

Charles De Wolf’s notes at the conclusion of the book illuminate both the writer and his work, while cautioning in the afterword, “to relentlessly render factual—historical or biographical—what should be left as literary would surely spoil the story.”

It is certain, however, that these are stories that plunge fearlessly into the place that lies between sanity and madness, between tradition and modernity, between the past and the future. They capture the place that T.S. Eliot described, the spot where “between the motion and the act falls the shadow.” Written at the beginning of the last century, it is startling how they, and Akutagawa, speak to the time that we live in now.

(This review was first published by Rain Taxi and was written by Janet Brown.)

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Where East Eats West: The Street-Smarts Guide to Business in China by Sam Goodman (BookSurge)

Asia By the Book welcomes our newest reviewer, Len Lee, a lifelong resident of Chengdu and a senior at Tian Fu College of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, where he majors in Finance.

After I finished reading Where East Eats West, I had a feeling that I had not read a book. Instead I felt as if I had watched a movie where a foreigner came to China, learned the language, came up with an idea to start a business, faced various problems, found a way to solve them, and in the end wrote a book that summarized his experiences.

Where East Eats West

I have to say Sam Goodman is some kind of Chinese expert who hasn’t wasted the years that he has spent in China. In this book, Sam uses simple and short words to tell us how to do business in China, He explains the meaning of “face,” how to get Guanxi (relationships), how to deal with the government and so on. It is a very, very pragmatic book and useful not only for a foreigner who wants to come to China and do some business, but also for the Chinese. I have to admit, as someone who is Chinese, I have never read a book before which introduces Chinese business practices in such a simple and clear way until I read this one. You can easily understand this book; more importantly, you can use it.

Although Sam does a great job, there are some places where I don’t agree with him. In his book, Sam uses several chapters to talk about Guanxi: what it is and how to get it. As far as I’m concerned, in reality, we would never talk about it or use it in such a direct fashion. We view Guanxi as an art which needs wisdom and which is not that easy.

At present, more and more people don’t talk about “Guanxi”, but instead use a new term, “Zuoren”----how to be a person, or how to conduct yourself well. This is because now people see Guanxi as a derogatory term while “Zuoren” is not. It means first you should know things well within yourself; then you will be able to do things well externally. As a result, people will like you and help you.

Later in his book, Sam says ‘In mainland China, the “teamwork” model prized in the west is virtually non-existent‘. Based on my comprehension, I interpret that to mean ‘As the author sees it, Chinese people do not have the “teamwork” spirit.’

Are you ^@#$ kidding me, Sam??!!! You should take a look at the latest Chinese military and civilian parade at Tian’anmen square which celebrated the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. How much teamwork was displayed by these participants!

If you don’t agree with that, let’s look at the Beijing Olympic Game’s organizing work. The president of the IOC (International Olympic Committee) has said many times that the Beijing Olympic Games will be seen as the most successful Olympic Games ever. I think Chinese people have the strongest spirit of teamwork in the world. And don’t forget that China is a socialist society who admires groups and teams. It is not that the teamwork model doesn’t exist in China, it is you, Sam, who doesn’t find it.

As for what Sam sees as a lack of creativity, and an inability to face problems among Chinese people, these are not the real issues. In my opinion, the issue is the author doesn’t know how to bring out the teamwork spirit of his Chinese employees. To help him do this, I suggest that Sam learn from the Chinese Communist Party.

At last, I want to say that as a foreigner, Sam has a high level of knowledge about the Chinese language and Chinese culture. He can be an example that I can learn from and Where East Eats West could be—with a little more understanding of Guanxi and Chinese teamwork-- a good book that foreigners can learn from.--Len Lee

Carpe Diem by Autumn Cornwell (Square Fish)

Vassar Spore is a sixteen year old over-achiever who has her life planned out for the next ten years.  She will take AP and AAP (Advanced Advanced Placement) classes over the summer and is determined to be valedictorian of her high school class.  She has no doubts about being accepted and graduating from the college which bears her name, and she intends to win the Pulitzer Prize.

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However, one calm evening Vassar receives an envelope postmarked from Malaysia—sent by the grandmother she’s never met – Gertrude.  Inside is a note that says “Happy Birthday, kiddo! Ta da!  One all-expense paid vacation backpacking through Malaysia, Cambodia, and Laos –with ME!” Along with the note is another envelope.that contains a round-trip ticket to Singapore.  Of course, Vassar decides, there is no way she has time to accept this present, not with her meticulously planned life.

But after Vassar’s parents receive a collect call from Grandma Gertrude, for some reason they allow their daughter go to Southeast Asia.  The small fragments of their conversation with Gertrude that Vassar is able to overhear contains words like “Bubble…birth…too young…rubber ball…dying…egg”.

No idiot, Vassar realizes that Grandma Gertrude has somehow blackmailed her parents into agreeing to the trip that will put such a big clink into her Life Goals.  But now she has more than enough reason to go – to find out what Gertrude’s Big Secret is.

With only two weeks to plan for her odyssey, Vassar and her parents pack whatever they think is essential to her safety and well being--which turns out to be ten fully loaded bags of luggage.  Setting off with her PTP (Portable Travel Planner) and her entourage of baggage, Vassar finds herself on an airplane to Singapore.  Having never before done anything without intensive planning, Vassar is full of anxiety as she sets foot in her first foreign country. Her anxiety intensifies as there is no Grandma Gertrude to meet her and a stranger has been sent to drive her to Malaysia.

When Vassar finally meets her grandmother, she is told to rest because they will leave for Cambodia the following morning.  She tries in vain to find out what the Big Secret is from her grandmother, who finally agrees to give her clues that will help her solve the mystery on her own.

And thus begins Vassar’s adventure.  She will go to the ancient temples of Angkor Wat, walk the streets of Phnom Penh, trek through the jungles of Laos, and learn what it means to really live life – all without a plan.  The only thing Vassar knows is that she will never be the same again.

At the end of this debut novel for young adults there is a short interview with the author. It’s here where you will find that almost eighty percent of Vassar’s adventures and situations were experienced by the author. In fact, after reading this book, you may want to take the next flight to Southeast Asia yourself.--Ernie Hoyt

Leaving Mother Lake by Yang Erche Namu and Christine Mathieu (Back Bay Books)

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When adolescence strikes us, are we guaranteed to long for something beyond what we have? Even in her home village, “where children could roam at our own will and visit from house to house and village to village without our mothers’ ever fearing for our safety” and where a woman could be certain she would not be forced into marital servitude by an oppressive husband or sullied by sexual scandal, Namu still yearns for something beyond these freedoms.

Perhaps matriarchy is not what we expect. That thing we call matriarchal culture is more accurately labeled as matrilineal descent model, and is neither inherently matriarchal nor egalitarian. Taking a thorough look at the Moso peoples’ complicated social structure, Namu’s story shows us that even her female-driven culture maintains a male-dominated public presence, wherein the culture is represented solely by men through trade and travel. Of course, proximity to bridal abduction rituals and other obviously male dominant practices of the Yi culture highlights the Moso feminism, which allows women to not only own property, but to control household politics, take and refuse lovers at will and have uncontested custody of children.

Despite Namu’s relative freedom as a woman, the culturally conditioned instruction given by her mother resembles caricatures of American housewives in the 1950’s. Emphasizing traditional models of female domestic leadership, Namu’s mother says: "You're a woman, you belong in the house, to the village. Your power is in the house. Your duty is to keep the house, to be polite to old people and to serve food to the men." The younger woman feels trapped by these expectations and by the gender division that allows women power in the domestic world of home and village but still insists that “only men could leave their mothers’ houses, and even they never left just to fulfill their personal ambitions.”

After getting a taste of the world beyond her village, Namu returns and receives a coveted employment position and seems destined for local fame. But she has already realized that her ambitions are much larger than her village can sustain. By pursuing her own unorthodox ambition, Namu rebels against more than her own mother; she rebels against cultural expectation and responsibility. It seems evident, though not explicitly acknowledged, that her ability to sustain ambition and to succeed relies upon the influence of her mother’s own rebellious spirit. The headstrong mother produces an even more fiercely headstrong daughter. It is this inheritance that is the most important and the most difficult to face.

Namu’s story is one about growing up and finding her own place in the world. She brings us from halcyon days in her mountain village, where she is barely touched by the Cultural Revolution that rages through China, to the experiential instruction she receives in the beauty and hardship of the world beyond Mother Lake. The storytelling is lively and maneuvered between the book’s two authors, providing readers with the character depth and the cultural context that makes Namu’s coming of age unforgettable.--by Kristianne Huntsberger

Jasmine Nights by S.P. Somtow (St. Martin’s Press)

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When I worked at the Elliott Bay Book Company I was always in search of titles to recommend for twelve to fourteen year old boys. These recommendations had to be something more than the popular wizard series or the classic adventures of Verne and Kipling, whose language could be difficult for some young readers. If I were working at that bookstore now, I would be sure to have Somtow’s novel on hand.

Though not billed as a young adult book, Jasmine Nights is a perfect fit. The hero, Justin, is nearing thirteen years of age and learning the life lessons imparted by his crazy family, his crazy morphing body, and the crazy world in 1960's Bangkok where he has been deposited by his parents and where he learns about friendship, love, family and himself.

Inspired by his spunky and irreverent great- grandmother, Justin begins planning his Pinocchio transformation into a real boy. His first adventure on this course belies how far he has to go to meet his goal, which lies somewhere at the end of a list including tree climbing, swimming naked in the khlong and saying nasty words, “whose meaning I am only now starting to guess at.” His first act is kleptomania, but his shoplifted object is a Penguin Classic copy of Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Justin’s journey continuously skirts this line between his romantic, literary inclinations and his directed assimilation into even the darkest corners of the “real world.”

Like climbing trees and skinny dipping, issues of race, class and cultural conflict have never before entered Justin’s imagination until he met his African American neighbor, Virgil and becomes attracted to Virgil’s natural boyishness and his commitment to the young and painful cultural history that his family carries. It is the painful portion of Virgil’s heritage that takes the stage as the expat children begin their school year and racial tensions flare.

When Justin discovers that a Boer classmate’s best friend back in South Africa was black he asks why, then, should he and an American boy from Georgia be so cruel to Virgil. It’s different, the American boy explains, “I used to hang out with [black children] too, sometimes, but they knew better’n to piss in the same toilet or sit in the front of the bus. It ain’t that I’m prejudiced or nothing, Justin, it’s just, well, we don’t belong together.”

Justin is overcome by it all and by his own participation in the classist prejudices of his culture, noting that “there is a terrible wrongness in the world but that I am powerless to correct it. There is a disturbance in the dharma of the cosmos.”

Luckily, the book does not flatten the issue. Justin sees that, above all, it isn’t an easily definable problem since each of the boys “is the victim of a self-perpetuating cycle of injustice.” It isn’t the fault of any of them individually, he notes, “It’s the whole forsaken universe, locked in a maze without doors, all of us, each one of us and island, each one of us alone.” As part of his transformation, Justin takes it upon himself to right these great wrongs.

Perhaps the most significant weight that leans this novel toward the young adult market is the lively treatment of this very weighty subject and the fact that the hero succeeds.—Kristianne Huntsberger

Bringing Tony Home by Tissa Abeysekara (Scala House Press)

Kristianne Huntsberger, a soon-to-be Bangkok resident, looks at memory and identity through the eyes of a Sri Lankan writer.

The epigraph to Bringing Tony Home is taken from a dialogue with the Buddha, in which a man asks, "If I die and am born again as you say I will be, is that, which is reborn, the same me?" The Buddha replies that it is "neither you, nor yet any other." Tissa Abeysekara writes that, likewise, his book, "being truth recreated through memory, is neither true nor untrue." It is a collection of stories grafted with autobiography. Memory and fiction come in and out of focus the way that a sweeping camera pans over an expansive landscape where a small figure traces a road along the railroad tracks.

Locating identity within memory and the recorded history of his mid-twentieth century home in post-colonial Ceylon is a daunting task for the narrator, a boy from a privileged native family whose fortunes failed after World War II. He recalls a British fighter plane crash in 1942, and his memory of watching the wounded pilot being carted away in a hackney. His mother considers this a constructed memory because he had been only three years old "and according to her it is not possible to remember that far back and over the years I came to doubt it myself, but now I remembered the scene once more and it seemed quite real and if it was otherwise like Mother suspected, it didn't seem to matter anymore.". The family is forced to leave behind the "Big House" and the red Jaguar and Tony, the faithful family dog. The boy's mother would have him learn to adapt and his father would have him hold on to the former world. These stories explain the consequences of this division, evidenced in the narrator's internal and social struggle. When revisiting the native home of his grandmother he encounters a monk on the mountain who asks, "'from where are you?' This question in my language implies much more than your place of residence. It wants to know your origin." This is the question the narrator pursues and the one that provokes the deep introspection of Abeysekara’s stories.

When the narrator rescues his dog, marching him the distance between the abandoned Big House in Depanama and the poor one in Egodawatta, or when he rejects his father’s gift, rediscovers his adolescent lover or travels to the central hills where his grandmother was born, we understand that we are being shown more than just these incidents. We are following the narrator as he learns, finally, the meaning behind the episodes in his life. There is clarity in the distance he has gained and in remembering things past, much like glimpsing the sea from the mountaintop. As the monk he encountered near his grandmother's home explained, after years of looking, it will happen suddenly: "through that little break in the long line of hills, like through the eye of a needle, I saw the water, blue and glistening like a crest gem. Ever since then I see it. I need glasses to read, but I see faraway things." Abeysekara paused in the middle of his life to reflect on a world he no longer recognized and which had ceased to recognize him, and to glimpse the world he was unable to see before that moment.

After receiving word that Abeysekara had passed away in April of this year I re-read Bringing Tony Home. Returning to the book as tribute to the man's nostalgia, I found my own. Between the pages I had left a bus transfer and a strand of hair--a gray one--that I lost while reading a passage in which the narrator unpacks the story of his own birth, faced with entries from the diary his father kept that year. How does one react to the unraveling of one’s own myth? By recognizing the contradictions of our fathers as our own, Abeysekara answers. The relationship then between fiction and fact in these stories is the same as in the lives we live. We re-member and re-read and re-live our memories to make meaning.

Tokyo: City on the Edge by Todd Crowell and Stephanie Forman Morimura (Asia2000)

Ernie Hoyt, Tokyo resident, unearths a different sort of guidebook that illuminates his hometown.

I can't help but love Tokyo, as it's been my adoptive city for almost fifteen years now. But to have visitors appreciate what some people have described as an urban metropolis, concrete jungle, city that never sleeps, city of contrasts or safest city in the world and a number of other cliches, it's nice to find two authors who share my special love for this city. They are Todd Crowell and Stephanie Forman Morimura. Crowell lived in Tokyo during the '50s and returned as a military intelligence officer in the '60s. He currently resides in Hong Kong where he writes for Asiaweek. Morimura moved to Tokyo in 1980 to work for the International Education Center on a two year contract. She met and married a Japanese national and made Tokyo her home.

I should point out that this is not a guide book to Tokyo. It does not have a listing of what's the best place to eat or where the cheapest place to stay can be found. It's about the city as a whole. The authors describe Tokyo as a "collection of villages" where each neighborhood has its own character and charm. It's a city in which twenty private railway lines and a dozen or so subway lines transports its million- plus dwellers to and from work everyday. A city in which the world's 500 largest companies are found,100 of which have their head offices here.

If you came to Tokyo as a first- time visitor, you would most likely land at Narita International Airport, located forty-five minutes outside the city by train. Once leaving the terminal, you would be surprised to see miles of rice fields and farmland, not the sprawling city of concrete you might have imagined. Once you board the train headed into town, the first major site you will see would be Tokyo Disneyland - however, you will still not be in Tokyo proper as Tokyo Disneyland is located in Chiba Prefecture.

You might also be surprised to find that in 1943, Tokyo was abolished as a city. It has become Tokyo-To which includes outlying suburbs and a few islands off the coast.

Tokyo Proper consists of 23 wards that each have a character all of their own. A few are introduced in this book to give an idea of the diversity of the city. In Arakawa Ward, you will find the last remaining Ding-Dong Trolley. It runs from Minowabashi to Waseda. In Sumida Ward, just north of the Ryogokukan (the building where sumo bouts take place), is a monument dedicated to those lives lost in the Great Kanto Earthquake and Fire of 1923 and to the victims of American firebombing in 1945 during World War II. (Although the book does not mention where this is, I went searching on my own and discovered it to be in a place called Yokoamicho Park.)

To get a glimpse of Tokyo's X Generation, all you have to do is head to Harajuku and Shibuya in Shibuya Ward. Not only will you find the latest in teen fashion, but you will find a host of gourmet restaurants as well. In Shinjuku Ward, you will come across Hyakunincho-- which plays home to Russian hookers and the Yakuza at night while by day it's a bustling Korea Town.

You are also introduced to some other neighborhoods that have their own claim to fame. Den-En Chofu is one such place, considered the Beverly Hills of Tokyo. Another is Yanaka-- where the residents fought to preserve old neighborhoods and buildings, and now use them as ateliers and boutiques. There is the Odaiba District -- Tokyo's waterfront city which could be compared to New York's Coney Island.

For anybody with an interest in Tokyo, this will be a delightful trip through an amazing place. I'm still finding new places to explore and new things to experience-- even after spending fifteen years in the middle of this wonderful city.

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder (Picador)

Asia By the Book is delighted to receive this review from Ryan Mita, former bookseller at Seattle's Elliott Bay Book Company, a traveler who has volunteered his time and energy in South America and Asia, and a librarian-in-the-making.

In a shabby cottage in Central Japan lives a brilliant professor of mathematics, who wears a plain suit and moldy shoes. Handwritten notes are clipped onto every inch of his suit, tangible reminders of his identity. The most important note reads: "My memory lasts only 80 minutes." His new housekeeper is a single mother, an empty person who agrees that she contains a zero inside.

The housekeeper and the professor make an unlikely pair, joined by her son, nicknamed Root for his flat head. The professor will handwrite a note to remember their presence: "The new housekeeper…and her son, ten years old."

The plot unfolds unhurriedly as Ogawa skillfully blends little victories into larger, more painful setbacks. The housekeeper treats her son and the professor to see their beloved baseball team, the Hanshin Tigers. Root idolizes the current team and the professor had memorized the team's statistics until 1976, the season of the car accident that impaired his memory. This exciting shared experience will press the professor to the limits of exhaustion. After returning to the cottage, he develops a fever and slumbers for three days.

The housekeeper remains by his bedside, nurturing the professor back to health. However, the professor's sister-in-law reports this rule violation to the agency and the housekeeper is assigned to another client. As she mops the floor at a tax consultation office, she begins to believe in mathematics and "the sense that this invisible world was somehow propping up the visible one." Soon after, Root reaches out to the professor and the housekeeper is invited back.

During the hot summer, the professor devotes himself to solving a problem posed by the Journal of Mathematics. After two months of quiet concentration, the puzzle is completed and the housekeeper takes the proof to the post office. Satisfied, she purchases a few clean items for the professor and returns to the cottage in 70 minutes. The professor does not recognize her and begins their relationship again with the question: "How much did you weigh when you were born?"

Although his mind is mathematically keen, the professor's true gift is his ability to draw people together. For his elegant proof, the journal awards the professor first prize and the small family sets out to find a suitable gift. They decide to add to the professor's nearly complete baseball card collection. Together, the mother and son will crisscross the streets of an unnamed city in Hyogo prefecture. They will ride the "dingy elevators" seeking the elusive piece. And as they search, a new world opens up for Root, a world he shares with his friend and mentor, the professor.

One of the fascinating aspects of this novella is the clear and natural voice Ogawa writes with. Her voice allows Ogawa to create a pace, unmarred by actual names or specific places. Her seemingly simple plot hints at a larger story, like the intricate details in the foreground of a vivid painting, and makes The Housekeeper and the Professor a quietly astonishing book.

To Myanmar With Love: A Travel Guide for the Connoisseur edited by Morgan Edwardson and photographs by Steve Goodman (ThingsAsian Press)

Myanmar is often in the news and often for reasons that make people determined that they will never set foot in the place. To find any information about what lies beneath the government's actions and policies or the latest national disaster takes such effort that the casual inquirer is likely to give up long before any results are found. And yet a lingering desire to know about the people, the culture, the daily life of this much-maligned country continues to tease curiosity, unsatisfied--until now.

"You have to go," the editor of To Myanmar With Love was told by a traveler, "It's such an amazing place and the people are so sweet." Morgan Edwardson put aside his qualms and set off to see Myanmar for himself. He was so delighted that he "returned three more times in the following year. Each visit was unforgettable." He goes on to say that the people of Myanmar, "not the government, are the focus of this book."

And they are--as contributors to the essays in the book as well as the subjects of the essays, generously and wholeheartedly eager to share their country and their culture with the outside world. As one Myanmar citizen said, "Show people that my country is not some sort of hell."

This book does this so well and so vividly that readers will race through the essays, vicariously savoring noodles with Yangon gourmet Ma Thanegi, having a traditional teashop breakfast with Win Thuya in Bagan and other places, carbo-loading with Giles Orr before tackling the sightseeing glories of the Shwedagon Pagoda. With Robert Carmack they will explore the colonial glories of the Strand Hotel in Yangon, learn the pleasures of being derailed in Bago with Peter Walter and a friendly railway clerk, and watch the launching of fire balloons that are three stories high with Anne Marie Power in the Shan State town of Taunggyi.

Breakfast with 2,700 monks in the company of Morgan Edwardson, explore a forest where spirits reside with Hpone Thant, visit a market where not a single souvenir can be found with Guillaume Rebiere where "colors, fragrances, and sounds are all sewn together into a patchwork." Deep sea dive in the Myeik Archipelago with Graydon Hazenberg, find the elusive Ayeyarwady dolphins with Hpone Thant and learn how these extraordinary creatures help the local fishermen. Take a bicycle, a boat, a pony cart, a trishaw, or a slow, slow train. Learn the joys of chewing betel or the casual elegance of wearing a longyi or savor the sweetness of tamarind flakes dissolving on the tongue.

The two features that appear in every volume in the To Asia With Love series of guidebooks are particularly outstanding in this book.

Paying It Forward: Suggestions for giving back while you're on the road reminds readers that "a donation can include more than just money." Viola Woodward tells how travelers can help spruce up schools and monasteries with a coat of fresh paint by supplying the paint and the labor. Sudah Yehudah Kovesh Shaheb's chance encounter with beach vendors leads to a visit to their homes and a trip with then to Yangon. Jan Polatschek tells how to teach English at monasteries while passing through town. Kyaw Zay Latt explains how to help in orphanages, with a list of places to visit with addresses, and Janice Neider provides a list of items to give children instead of money or candy,

Resources for the Road offers a variety of annotated reading lists, suggestions for language learning materials, a wonderful essay on the bookshops of Yangon by James Spencer, and a comprehensive list of informational websites. And throughout the entire book, Steve Goodman's photographs reveal the faces of the Myanmar people and the beauty that is found in their country.

To go or not to go? That is a choice we all are free to make on our own. To know or not to know? For years we have had little-to-no choice in this matter. Now we can choose, and with that choice, now we can know the culture, customs, cuisine, as well as the luminous and gracious people, of this isolated country.

Available at ThingsAsian Books

More books on Myanmar at ThingsAsian Books

Getting Wet: Adventures in the Japanese Bath by Eric Talmadge (Kodansha)

From Tokyo, Ernie Hoyt examines Eric Talmadge's plunges into different forms of the Japanese bath.

<br In 1981, Eric Talmadge set off for an adventure to the Land of the Rising Sun, not knowing that he would live there for the next twenty- plus years. While working for the Associated Press in Japan, he was assigned to cover the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics, held in a place famous for its hot springs and giving Talmadge the brilliant idea of writing about Japan's onsen (hot springs).

In Japan, bathing is serious business. Hot springs are everywhere, from Hokkaido to Kyushu, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of sento (public bath houses). But this book isn't a guide to the best hot springs or the cheapest sento. It’s one man's immersion into Japanese culture to find out why the Japanese are so obsessed with taking a bath.

The first spot Talamadge visits is Ikaho, a small town whose livelihood depends on its hot springs. In Japan, there is a law governing the use of the term onsen. The waters must be natural and must be at a certain temperature. Although Ikaho had been a popular hot spring destination for many years, in 2004 the town’s main attraction received some unwanted attention.

News broke that a lot of the ryokans (Japanese inns) were not properly maintained. A few places were topping off their baths with tap water or adding mixtures to make the baths look as if they contained more minerals than advertised. This was shocking news to the public at large, and the uproar closed down at least three of Ikaho’s inns. But the uproar became only a minor burp with Ikaho still a popular ryokan destination.

Aside from the meals served at a ryokan, a popular feature is the rotenburo - the outdoor bath. Before the arrival of Western modesty, most of these were communal—there are still some communal baths out in the country. But don't expect to be dazzled by young babes in the buff. The users are usually older women.

A ryokan isn’t the only place to enjoy an outdoor bath, Talmadge discovers on the sparsely populated island of Shikine, a part of Tokyo that is an eleven-hour ferry trip from the mainland. Shikine’s special hot springs are carbonated pools of iron sulfide. Their touted medical benefits may be questionable but they are definitely relaxing. However a dip in one of these sulfide pools may ensure a ripe odor for the next couple of days.

For those who feel they cannot afford to stay at a hot spring or find that the ryokans are a little out of the way, there’s a traditional Japanese bath that won’t cost as much but that may take a little courage to experience – the sento.

This is the public bathhouse, a vanishing feature in Japan, like drive-in movies in America. While not a spot that treats patrons like royalty, it’s quite relaxing.

Shy people can enjoy the sento experience by going to a super-sento – a public bath theme park—where communal areas require a swimsuit. Bathers can choose a milk bath, a sake bath, a rose water bath or a bath that will take them back to the days of the samurai.

The onsen can be recreated at home with bath products called “Japan’s Famous Hot Springs” which will turn any bathtub into the mineral waters of Beppu, Izu or other popular resorts. So instead of taking a quick shower, lie back in the tub for an onsen experience and let all the daily troubles drain away.

Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong (Penguin)

Large countries have frontiers, and these are places where myths are born. America has its far West and China has the steppes that are the gateway to Mongolia. Both places have given rise to legendary men, the U.S. cowboy and the nomadic horsemen whose forbears rode with Genghis Khan to conquer the northern half of China, and subsequently much of the known world.

Chen Zhen is a student of history who comes to Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution with two boxes of banned books and a strong sense of curiosity about the world around him. Becoming fascinated by the nomadic hunters whom he lives with, Chen apprentices himself to an old man who still holds a leadership position among his people and whose knowledge is encyclopedic.Slowly Chen learns the importance of wolves to nomadic culture and how these animals are both highly revered and fiercely fought against.

While searching for the key to Mongolian military conquests, Chen begins to attribute this feat to the wisdom the Mongols have learned from the wolves. The strategies used by wolves to track down prey and elude human cunning Chen sees mirrored in the hunting skills of the nomads who surround him and in the accounts he has read of Mongolian battle campaigns. in an attempt to learn more about an animal whom he feels has shaped history, Chen kidnaps a wolf cub to raise as his own and to observe in a scientific manner.

He doesn't expect to fall in love with the small wolf, or with the wild beauty of Inner Mongolia's grasslands. Nor does he remember the warning that each man kills the thing he loves.

This novel is written by a man who lived much of Chen Zhen's fictional life. Jiang Rong volunteered to work in Inner Mongolia in 1967 and lived there until 1978. He adopted an orphaned wolf cub (a far more benign acquisition than Chen's abduction)and raised it and obviously loved it. His eleven years on the steppes are conveyed quite beautifully in this novel--a love letter to a vanished world--and the account of Chen's spiritual odyssey rings true on every level, even when it is cruel and thoughtless, as well as when it is lyrical.

The novel in many ways is an environmental lamentation and an indictment of empire building and manifest destiny that at times threatens to swamp the story but never does. It is an amazing book to come out of China, where it "sold in the millions--in both authorized and pirated editions". It would be interesting to know whether Chen's philosophic reflections and the unsparing descriptions of the Han Chinese settlers were included in the Chinese edition, and how the omission of these portions would alter the pace and focus of the novel. Would the adventure of Mongolian wolf hunts and the haunting beauty and sadness of Chen's relationship with the baby wolf make a better novel without the didactic discursions? Read Wolf Totem and decide for yourself...

The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama by Pico Iyer (Knopf)

Kristianne Huntsberger, bookseller emeritus and professional nomad, from wherever she may be at the moment, sends a review of Pico Iyer's examination of one of the most revered men in the world.

How are we to think about the Dalai Lama, the Nobel laureate, the king kept from his country, the spiritual leader, the pop culture darling and the unswerving voice of global compassion? In the past half- century the Dalai Lama has been thrust onto the world’s stage, first as a fairy tale prince driven from his home and now as the beatific wise man who has charmed billions of people across the globe. Because the Dalai Lama maneuvers a variety of roles, a biography of him is a daunting task. Seasoned travel writer Pico Iyer rises to the challenge in his newest book, which, far from inappropriately simplifying the Dalai Lama’s life, instead concentrates on the complexity of all the interpretations and expectations of him.

Drawing on experiences from his 30-year acquaintance with the Dalai Lama, Iyer addresses both the public and the personal life of the monk, the politician, the philosopher and iconic figure of both tradition and change. We learn the history of Tibet’s entry into the global neighborhood and the Dalai Lama’s reactions to these changes. We see crowds come like moths to flame and see the man grow tired, or long for the simple life of a monk.

Ultimately, Iyer considers the Dalai Lama a doctor in our global neighborhood who is trained to heal specific ills. His focus lies less in our physical human ailments than in our spiritual needs and his strategy is distinctly focused on showing us how important our own role is in our healing. The Dalai Lama is thus a good doctor, according to Iyer, because “a doctor’s paradoxical wisdom often is to make himself redundant.” He strives to inspire each of us to take control of our own health, either by using the tools and advice he gives us, or by going ourselves to the source.

The future looms as Iyer follows the Dalai Lama through Japan, Canada, the United States and back to his exile home in Dharamsala. There is a palpable question that lies between everyone who works closely with the Dalai Lama: What will happen when he is gone? Will we succeed in adopting global policies of compassion? Will the Chinese government install a political puppet in the Dalai Lama’s place? He has done what he can as a philosopher, a politician and a global icon but, in the end, he must simply hope that the wisdom he has prescribed will be taken to heart, and that his country and the world will recover from their maladies. Meanwhile, he continues to pray for his Chinese brothers and sisters daily and he turns out each light when he exits a room because, he tells Iyer, even such a small gesture can have effect, especially if more people in more rooms remember to do this.

The Vagrants by Yiyun Li (Random House)

Kristianne Huntsberger, a writer, a performance artist, a folklorist, and one of the world's true booksellers, joins Ernie Hoyt and Janet Brown at Asia By the Book.

At the raw end of the Cultural Revolution, three years after Chairman Mao's death and the Gang of Four's arrest, the residents of small-town China are reeling from the upheaval, trying to decipher some meaning to their lives. Yiyun Li takes us into the private world of the people of Muddy River, where a dozen appropriately charming and idiosyncratic characters grapple with problems, both personal and patriotic, which arise following the public execution of Teacher Gu's daughter, Gu Shan. A former pioneer of Mao, Shan’s public doubt of communism brands her a dangerous counterrevolutionary. For her dissension, and the threat she poses to society, she is killed. But the people's commitment to these demonstrations is not as fervent as it once was and the seed of doubt is transferred to them.

Shan's death reminds each character of his or her inescapable fate. Identity is unalterable and we are confined both by our past and by the popular perception. The novel's Shakespearian fool, Bashi, notes that his perceived idiocy is "one of the rare crimes for which one could never get enough punishment. A robber or a thief got a sentence of a year or more for a crime--a stolen purse--but the tag of idiot, just as counterrevolutionary, was a charge against someone's very being.” For these charges one cannot serve time and gain reconciliation with society; the sentence of one's identity is final.

We see the characters trying to escape these identity confines, trying to see new possibilities and to alter the course of their lives. There is a scent of change, a flicker of hope and some unidentifiable potential. Ultimately though, it is Teacher Gu's dark voice of reason that shadows the actions of all the others.

When Mrs. Gu, fed up with the injustice of her daughter's death, the inability to perform proper mourning rights, and the overall sense of confinement, reaches her transformative moment, she is brought down by her husband's determined acquiescence: "'What I own is my fortune; what I'm owed is my fate,'"Teacher Gu answered. The words sounded soothing and he repeated them one more time to himself in a low chanting voice. His wife did not reply and shut herself in the bedroom."

Teacher Gu recognizes the utter hopelessness of their human condition and the commonality of suffering, wherein every action is as hopeless as the letters that he mails to his first wife, which are intercepted, surprisingly passed through the censors, and dropped unopened upon the desk of the woman who lies dying in a hospital bed somewhere out of reach.

Yiyun Li's language is rich and her characters charming for their deeply human flaws. Already acknowledged with several awards, including a Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and a PEN/Hemingway Award, Yiyun Li skillfully blends personal exploration and social commentary. She calls upon her memories of China, which she left in 1996, to create an authentic and complicated story of a country and its people.

Yakuza Moon: Memoirs of a Gangster's Daughter by Shoko Tendo (Kodansha)

From Tokyo, Ernie Hoyt offers a new reading suggestion with his review of a highly original memoir.

Many people think of the Yakuza in its simplest terms - the Japanese mafia-- an image they've probably learned from bad Hollywood films or Takeshi Kitano movies such as "Brothers" or "Dolls". While it may be true that the Yakuza controls most of the red light districts, as well as having a hand in loan sharking, money laundering, and gun running, it is also an established part of Japan's society, although most Japanese would rather not talk about it.

Now there is a chance to explore the world of the Yakuza through the eyes of someone who was not only part of that world but was born into it. The daughter of a local Yakuza boss, Tendo feels that the literal meaning of yakuza is "rooted in a territory, taking care of a territory" and that the Yakuza are akin to a closely knit family.

In elementary school, Tendo becomes aware that she is treated differently from other kids. Parents of her classmates tell their children to avoid playing with her. At school, she is bullied, called "that yakuza kid," and treated as an outcast.

One day while cleaning the classroom floor, Tendo hears a teacher say,"Shoko Tendo? She can draw, and maybe her basic reading is OK, but that's about it. There's not much you can teach an idiot like that."

The other teachers laugh, responding,"You're not kidding." Only then do they discover that Tendo has overheard them. They quickly change the subject and praise her for cleaning the classroom, teaching her early on about the Japanese practice of "tatemae" or being two-faced.

As she gets older, Tendo becomes a yanki, a slang term for kids who defy authority and cruise around town causing trouble. She starts sniffing glue and quickly moves on to speed, becoming an addict by the time she's twelve.

As a teen, she escapes a near- rape from one of her father's underlings and learns to avoid his associates. However she suffers beatings from older members of her gang who don't like her attitude and think she's namaiki--impertinent and needing to be taught a lesson. Trouble catches up with her. She is sent to a reform school but once she gets out she reverts to her old habits and her old friends.

During the bubble years of Japan's economy, Tendo becomes a nightclub hostess. In love with a customer who happens to be married and has no intention of leaving his wife, Tendo believes this man will eventually get a divorce. She realizes that this is not going to happen only after he tells her that his wife is pregnant.

With the death of her father, Tendo reacts by thinking about her future, working harder than ever at the nightclub, and saving money. She reaches her goal of ascending to the position of Number One hostess and then quits with the intention of becoming a writer.

A woman with no qualms about who she is or where she's from, Tendo tells an inspiring story of how she survived the Yakuza--and escaped it.

Her book has become a bestseller in Japan and has been translated into more than a dozen languages.

Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes by Shoba Narayan (Random House)

What we eat is at the heart of who we are. It shapes our stories as completely as it shapes our bodies and defines our cultural worlds. In the United States, a certain post-war generation is bound together by the memory of canned creamed corn and Campbell's chicken noodle soup, as firmly as those a few years older are by the mention of powdered eggs. It is an unfortunate truth that none of these iconic culinary emblems are more than marginally edible.

And then there is the food that pervades the life of Shoba Naryan: flavorful, enticing, sumptuous dishes that are not just part of her existence. They are the substance and heart of her life. From the moment that she was taken to a Hindu temple for the rice-eating ceremony that marked her first meal, where she spat out the initial morsel because the clarified butter that had been stirred into the rice was burnt, food envelopes the milestones of her life and gives them a dimension of voluptuous, succulent, and bountiful pleasure.

When Shoba's mother becomes pregnant with her second child, she and her small daughter move back to her parents' home for the final stages of gestation. Shoba's mother takes to her bed where she is given "milk spiked with saffron, ground almonds and jaggery or cane sugar" rather than the calcium and iron tablets that serve the same function, and her favorite foods are brought by friends and relatives,who believe that "feeding a pregnant woman was akin to feeding God." It's impossible--if you're female-- to read about this incredibly civilized form of prenatal care without feeling overwhelming waves of envy and a longing to be born Tamil Brahmin in the next life.

After Shoba starts school, every lunch hour becomes a wildly exciting picnic, with little girls sharing bite-sized pieces of their biriyanis, appams dipped into stews of vegetables, cashews and coconut milk,mango pickles, idlis, with the girls with the best lunches reigning over everyone else.

Trips on the night train take on the same feast-like quality, with passengers sharing their food with nearby strangers: roti stuffed with spiced potatoes, sweet-and-sour buttermilk soup, spiced kidney beans. Vendors at stations along the way sell mangoes, milk sweets, and "thick yogurt in tiny terra-cotta pots." Travel is one long delightful culinary adventure.

Although food is the predominant feature of her daily landscape, Shoba cooks her first full meal only when a successfully prepared vegetarian feast will allow her to accept a fellowship to a U.S. university. While her family is confident that she will never be able to pull this off, Shoba has grown up eating, marketing, and watching her mother cook. She prepares food so luscious that reading about it causes an immediate trip to the closest South Indian restaurant and eating it guaranteed that Shoba's family will permit her to leave for America.

The stories in this memoir are as irresistible as the food that underpins it. Murdering New York goldfish leads to a frenzied taxi ride to replace them and an instant friendship and a fabulous meal with a taxi driver from Kerala. An eccentric sculpture professor opens up an undreamed of world of experimental art, lesbian friends and a wasp-nest of outraged Southern academics. And who would ever dream that an unconventional, outspoken artist who has lived for five years in the States would return home and find true romance in an arranged marriage?

You may not wish you were Indian as you gulp down this delicious memoir, but you certainly at times will wish you were Shoba Narayan, if only so you can eat the way that she does. Since twenty-one recipes garnish her anecdotes, this is easy to accomplish. But to have her sense of humor, flair for description, and adventurous spirit? Maybe in the next life!

Yak Butter Blues: A Tibetan Trek of Faith by Brandon Wilson (Pilgrim’s Tales)

Asia By the Book is delighted to be joined by reviewer and book omnivore, Ernie Hoyt, a bookseller for the past 21 years who continues to work in the industry in Tokyo. You can read more of Ernie's book reviews at Ern's Monthly Page Turners on his bilingual blog http://tokyoern.blogspot.com where he also shares his passion for eating in Tokyo and beyond

What's a couple to do after completing a journey from London to Cape Town during which they didn't end up killing each other in the process? To attempt what no other Western couple has done before. To walk the 1000-kilometer pilgrimage trail from Lhasa, Tibet to Katmandu, Nepal. However every travel agency they went to told them it was impossible, or out of the question, or that the Chinese government would never allow it. But those two words -– "can't" and "impossible"-- were just the catalysts needed for Wilson and his wife to make their trip a reality. This book recounts their odyssey.

After checking with a number of travel agencies and being told the same thing over and over again, "It can't be done", "That's impossible", they found a travel agent who was able to help them. Trekking in the Himalayas is no slice of cake, so they trained by climbing the mountains near Vail, Colorado. When all their necessary documents had been approved, they started their journey by flying to Lhasa. It was here where they got a firsthand look at the lives of the Tibetans and their struggle against oppression and prejudice. When the Wilsons discovered that walking this trail is forbidden to Tibetans, it only strengthened their resolve to accomplish their goal.

Their plan was to travel 35 kilometers a day and to reach Katmandu within a month. That plan was shattered after their first couple of days trekking. But instead of giving up or hiring transportation, the Wilsons went in search of buying a pack horse. It was as if they were given Herculean tasks that they would have to clear before reaching their next step. But with faith being their strongest bond, good fortune came upon them again. They found and bought a horse that was to be their companion. A Tibetan horse named Sadhu, which also happens to be the word for a "holy man". How is that for a good omen?

What started out as an adventure soon became a matter of survival. Armed with a dated and nearly useless map and their ever-present faith, they had to endure blizzards, sandstorms, high altitudes and being shot at by careless Chinese soldiers, who claimed they were shooting at birds -- for sport. They also had to worry about restocking provisions and feeding and resting their horse. The further they trekked from Lhasa, the villages became fewer and farther between and they found themselves having to rely on the kindness of strangers.

As they reached the border, they had only one concern -- would there be any trouble in taking their horse with them? Their dilemma was solved by not claiming anything when crossing the border and by not mentioning that they had a horse as a companion. As the border was quite crowded with a line of vehicles, the border guards virtually ignored them. They also unwittingly passed the Nepal Veterinary Checkpoint. Wilson and his wife might not be able to free Tibet from China, but they were able to free at least one Tibetan -- and that would be their constant companion, Sadhu.

This is an inspiring and unforgettable journey--you will be glad you made the trip.