This brave, occasionally moving and often hilarious memoir traces Muggins's relationships with Japanese women over the course of two decades. Few books set in contemporary Asian societies have been as successful at pulling the reader into the cultural milieu and making the foreign familiar. The author protests perhaps too strongly that How to Pick Up Japanese Chicks should not be mistaken for a self-help manual. In fact the smiles, the belly-laughs, the wistful there but for the grace of God go I nodding that every page elicits testify that it is the best sort of therapy for anyone suffering from relationship fatigue anywhere, anytime.