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The Roads to Sata A 2000Mile Walk Through Japan Alan Booth 9781568361871 Books

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The Roads to Sata A 2000Mile Walk Through Japan Alan Booth 9781568361871 Books

Great fun. I loved spending time in the author's company while reading this book AND I am sure I would enjoy recreating (some segment of) his journey, BUT I'm not so sure I'd want to go with him. As I like to note:
1. There is no travel writer like a British travel writer.
2. There is no eccentric like a British eccentric.
These two facts are not unrelated.

This is NOT the Japan of "Lost in Translation" or "Black Rain". This is a walk through the homely and homey back side of Japan, a counterpoint (more than a foundation) to the glittering Tokyo of popular western imagination. If you enjoy a book that takes you, not to the hotel lobbies and museums and oh-so-mystical touristic shrines, but to the fraying everyday, if you enjoy seeing a behind the stereotypes of a culture, this is fun stuff.

That said, this book dates from 20 years ago, and I'm afraid that the scenes of back-of-beyond-Japan that the author describes have now faded from this world. So, all the more reason to climb into this book as a time machine! Also it's a great cross cultural study... I especially enjoyed the scenes he recounts where, after 10 minutes of conversation in Japanese, he is told "no, we can't serve/house foreigners, as we don't speak English". The author's reply "but we've been speaking in Japanese for 10 minutes" usually does not save the day for him. Been there, done that... as we used to say, 20 years ago.


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The Roads to Sata A 2000Mile Walk Through Japan Alan Booth 9781568361871 Books Reviews

Gave as a gift. They really liked it.
I am moving to Japan and this book as wonderful to read.
Alan Booth was a true master of the genre. It breaks my heart twice that he died too early once for the tragedy of a man leaving a family behind, and once for an author of this quality leaving an audience wanting more. No doubt that if he had lived, he would have continued to fascinate us, entertain us, teach us with his prose.

I've lived in Japan twice and am preparing to return for a third stay. Booth nails it right down.

Mr. Booth, wherever you are, you done good.
Only part-way through this walk but even now it is like those characters Alan met and even Alan himself, are alive and are right this very moment, interacting with each other as I look on as a movie camera recording the scene.
A truly beautiful glimpse of Japan which even today, may be experienced as Alan did, simply by allowing Kami to flow without obstruction.
Alan Booth decided to go from Cape Soya in the North to Cape Sata in the South. A journey of more than 2,000 miles. But not only did he decide to walk the whole way he also decides to stick to the back roads, the rural areas of Japan, to get in touch with the real Japan and to stay only in Japanese style inns. In some places he is treated like family and in other places like an invader. After spending seven years in Japan, having a Japanese wife and learning about Japan you would think a walk, even if it is a hard one, would not be so bad. But in some cases it is terrible.
He runs into silent tramps, barking dogs, snotty high school boys, polite high school girls, nervous inn keepers, loud businessmen and giggling maids. He makes mistakes, he founds wonderful discoveries and he founds sad scenes of life and death in 20th Century Japan. Did he learn anything? No. Did he enjoy himself? Yes. Yet, no matter how hard he tried, much of the time he was treated like a foreigner.
Alan Booth walked the entire way, alone, from Cape Soya, on the far northern tip of the island of Hokkaido, to Cape Sata, as the title states, at the far southern end of the island of Kyushu. The subtitle states that it was a 2000-mile walk but he kept track of it in the local (and global) measure of kilometers, and felt it was a bit more, at 3,300 km. He therefore walked across three of the main Japanese islands (which included the main one of Honshu); he did not cross the fourth main island, Shikoku. It took him 128 days; he timed it right in terms of weather, starting in June in Hokkaido, with some snow still on the peaks, and ending in the October, as the leaves were turning, and it was becoming colder, in Kyushu. He never states the year; one reviewer suggest 1977, another, the early `80's. Clearly it was before 1986, when the book was first published.

It is a marvelous guide for non-Japanese on what to expect in the rural areas of Japan. Most certainly, he is "off the beaten track," never traveling through Tokyo or Kyoto. It is also about Japan, not Alan Booth "finding himself." Knowledge about the author comes in bits and pieces, almost incidentally. He was in theater, and moved to Japan in 1970. He married a Japanese woman, and does speak the language (despite what some natives think!). Like a good Englishman, he drinks beer, and the references to this vital "foot gasoline," as he says, are frequent. He never once mentions drinking water! Almost always, he stays in one of the local inns, called "ryokans"; generally, it is possible to walk from one village to another, all of which seem to have them. He is offered numerous rides, in automobiles, which he always declines, usually to the amazement (and sometimes the anger) of the driver.

He commences his book by saying that it is absurd to try to make sweeping generalizations about 120 million people. His meetings are the chance encounters of the road, generally quite brief. They are a wide spectrum, the good and the bad, but in general he does experience "the kindness of strangers," particularly towards foreigners, though he makes the exception for young boys, who tend to jeer at him, and wishes for more encounters with young girls, who are invariably polite. He has a wry sense of humor, most often conveyed when he tells anecdotes involving speaking Japanese with someone for 5-10 minutes, and yet they are still reluctant to let him stay in their ryokan, because he does not speak Japanese, and, of course, could not eat with chopsticks! "What was I speaking, Swahili"?

Booth does "nuance." There are many "Japans." For example "Crossing from Niigata to Toyama had reminded me a little of crossing from Yugoslavia to Austria from a land of calloused laborers to one where slightly obese people consume cream pastries and have safe-deposit boxes in air-conditioned banks." Ever observant, he highlights some of the cultural differences; consider "....I couldn't help noticing how different was the determinedly sanctimonious atmosphere that pervades most Christian churches from the breezy nonchalance with which visitors treat the religious monuments of Japan." Generalizations, there are a few "And then the litany began tiny country, no natural resources, misunderstood by everyone..." Booth even has observations about one of the classic divides between men and women Why men don't ask directions! And the answer is more often than not, the person questioned doesn't know, or gives the wrong directions!

Booth left us far too soon, dying of colon cancer, in his 40's. In his legacy he has also left us Looking for the Lost Journeys Through a Vanishing Japan (Kodansha Globe) which I intend to read. I envy his journey, and loved the way that he told the story. With his inspiration, perhaps I can emulate 7-day segments, with a few being in the national parks. 5-stars, plus.
Great fun. I loved spending time in the author's company while reading this book AND I am sure I would enjoy recreating (some segment of) his journey, BUT I'm not so sure I'd want to go with him. As I like to note
1. There is no travel writer like a British travel writer.
2. There is no eccentric like a British eccentric.
These two facts are not unrelated.

This is NOT the Japan of "Lost in Translation" or "Black Rain". This is a walk through the homely and homey back side of Japan, a counterpoint (more than a foundation) to the glittering Tokyo of popular western imagination. If you enjoy a book that takes you, not to the hotel lobbies and museums and oh-so-mystical touristic shrines, but to the fraying everyday, if you enjoy seeing a behind the stereotypes of a culture, this is fun stuff.

That said, this book dates from 20 years ago, and I'm afraid that the scenes of back-of-beyond-Japan that the author describes have now faded from this world. So, all the more reason to climb into this book as a time machine! Also it's a great cross cultural study... I especially enjoyed the scenes he recounts where, after 10 minutes of conversation in Japanese, he is told "no, we can't serve/house foreigners, as we don't speak English". The author's reply "but we've been speaking in Japanese for 10 minutes" usually does not save the day for him. Been there, done that... as we used to say, 20 years ago.