My favorite kind of memoir that shares personal feelings and motivations but also teaches me new things. I loved her escape to the ceramics village with her mom and again when she went to film the mountain sect monk initiation. Many of her goals were obscure to me and I got a little tired of her list of weird cultural events. Still the insider/outsider insights were good: those who dedicate their lives personal and professional to heritage arts, brushes with gay culture, expat English teachers. ( )

I haven't read many travel memoirs, but I find myself hoping that all of them are as engaging as this one.

Of course, it helps to have an interest in the places the author writes about. My best friend first got me interested in Japan, and there's something about its cultural differences from the West, its contradictory values, and its unique way of blending the past and the present so seamlessly that fascinates me. Karin Muller's journey into this country only deepened my knowledge and wonder.

In easy, conversational language, Muller jumps among the people and places she meets, from her up-and-down relations with her host family to various strangers, professionals, roommates, homeless, monks, and pilgrims she interacts with. Sometimes she is met with incredible acts of kindness and understanding, other times with coldness and even cruelty. It serves to underscore the kind of experience a foreigner can have in Japan; either welcomed or shunned, or sometimes both.

Muller's style makes it easy to get to know not only Japan, but also her as a person. I found myself admiring and sympathizing with her; she is honest about her fear, anger, and hopelessness in some situations, and yet she never grows self-pitying or gives up, although I might have many times. She tries her best to understand Japan and its culture, going to sometimes unimaginable lengths to fit in and accept its laws and values. She never judges the culture as right or wrong, instead musing over it, a fact I found very refreshing. She is honest about the good and the bad facets.

All in all, I want to read more of Karin's adventures, if she handles them all with such engaging and unwavering curiosity and aplomb. ( )

In 'Japanland', filmmaker Karen Muller travels to Japan for a year to immerse herself in the culture, and to make a documentary. She is honest and funny, relating her experiences and relationships, her hardships and triumphs. The reader gets a personal insight and access unlikely to be available to the casual visitor, and in these experiences finds connections and obligations have both a price and a reward. ( )

Fascinating. really caught me up. I went in search of the documentary that she was making. It too was interesting. ( )

Strange, having read through the reviews here before beginning mine, I feel a strong impulse to defend the author. Japan is a difficult place for Americans because the language and the behavioral patterns are subtle and minimalist beyond the typical American ability to perceive (think politeness, tea, zen) AND violent or vivid (think: youth fashions, drinking, sumo). Karin Muller is admirably independent and courageous - without those characteristics she would not have made it through her year - but it is just those characteristics that also seem to block her from fitting in enough to understand the interpersonal messes she made. I really liked her for trying, though, and it is a credit to her writing that her character shines through.

True, this book is not a good source if you want to learn about Japan, but it is not intended as a book about Japan (notice the title - it's about her search). There's a certain argument in cultural anthropology that I picked up in a book by Maya Nadig but is probably derived from older sources, that explores what happens to a person's sense of self when living in a different society. Broadly, because who you are is built up and suspended in a web of social relations and expectations, when these are ripped away or when you land in a completely different web, your own sense of self tends to break up. It's a weird feeling, often frightening, sometimes enraging. I can see some of that happening with Karin Muller, and it's a pity she doesn't seem to have been able to become aware of and analyze her experience.

In the end, what we have here is another book about failing to fit in (oddly, compared to travel writing about other places, the books about Japan seem to admit failure more frequently; look at the first dozen titles in this list, for example). At least this one is energetic and covers a lot of cultural ground.