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| A Ride in the Neon Sun: A Gaijin in Japan | 
 enlarge | Author: Josie Dew
Publisher: Little, Brown
Category: Book
Buy New: $8.47
Buy New/Used from $8.47
Avg. Customer Rating:  (15 reviews)
Sales Rank: 4149617
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown)
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 576
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 2
ISBN: 0316881562
EAN: 9780316881562
ASIN: 0316881562
Publication Date: April 1, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Josie spent eight months cycling round Japan, starting with Tokyo - the hustle and bustle of a very busy city with masses of cars, neon lights and fast food takeaways. Tokyo has a population of 27 million. Then she went on to the country, getting to know the land (75% of Japan is mountainous) and the people. Jodie, as most people called her, found it a fascinating country and A RIDE IN THE NEON SUN is full of wonderful anecdotes.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 great read July 18, 2005
i have lived in japan for the last 20 years, having completed my doctorate in japan, and being married to a japanese woman. i feel as though i may have some qualification to comment on this book, as opposed to the neo-japanologists who may have only spent a year or two in japan. i really enjoyed this book for what it is, a light-hearted and humorous account of a bicycle trip through japan. her accounts are spot on, and i find them even more so after all this time. i cannot agree that she has a racist outlook to the japanese or demeans them in any way. it is just an author describing what she sees, not what you want her to see. i find this refreshing and do not see the need to subscribe to a politically correct format in her style of reporting. she seems a regular person who is out to enjoy a bike ride without the politics.
all in all i can recommend this book for anyone who wants a great travel read or an insight into japan.
 Mildly entertaining, but mostly cliched and annoying January 24, 2005
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
I bought this book to read while I was in Japan on a two-week trip to Tokyo. Let me say up-front that I am definitely not a crunchy-granola adventure traveler-type of person; I like camping trips as long as they last only a weekend and when I vacation I like going to big cities and taking advantage of what a large metropolis has to offer. Maybe that is why I disliked this book so much, because Josie Dew and I are apparently very different.
One thing that annoyed me about the book was how derogatory she was about Japan's metropolitan areas, although she seemingly chose to spend a great deal of time in them. She never fully explains how she ended up in Japan for her cycling tour, and yet she complains ad nauseum about how crowded the country is and how hard it was to find unspoiled wilderness and places to camp. Um, I think ANYONE who knows ANYTHING about Japan understands that it's crowded over there. I think if she had done ANY research about Japan before going there she would have found out in short order that the place is either largely metropolitan or very mountainous, and because they are an industrial superpower there probably isn't a lot of unspoiled wilderness around Tokyo, Chiba and Yokohama, three of the most densely populated cities in the world. Personally, I loved Tokyo - I loved how busy and bustling it was and could have spent months there seeing all the sights. But maybe that is because I did some homework before my trip and knew what to expect; something Dew obviously didn't do.
The other thing that really annoyed me was something I've encountered before: the nature enthusiast who gets peeved when he or she discovers that the residents of a foreign land haven't kept large swaths of their countryside pristine and hospitable to adventure travelers. Dew complains about how "dirty" some parts of Japan are and how the people in Japan "ruined" some areas that could have been beautiful - well, Josie, probably the people in Japan were more concerned about building their society and furthering their economy than keeping their countryside preserved in a manner that would be acceptable to you, on the off chance you would decide to visit Japan. Her attitude is extremely self-centered and arrogant; she doesn't seem to realize that most people in Japan are trying to make a living and don't have the wherewithal to take off cycling and complaining for several months out of the year.
Finally, my other big gripe with the book is how Dew repeatedly stereotypes and makes fun of the Japanese people who host her in their homes and give her things they could probably ill-afford to part with. She relied heavily on Japanese hospitality and generosity, but acts blithely about it. She definitely wouldn't have been able to make it through Japan without people giving her things, yet in many cases she took things from people who were poor (much poorer than she herself) and yet she doesn't seem appreciative of what people offered her or seem to "get" that their generosity cost them much more than she had the right to ask from them.
Also - some of the cultural information she provides about Japan is plain wrong. She never lists sources for the historical and cultural information she imparts, but whatever her sources were they were highly inaccurate.
This was the first Josie Dew book I read and it will be the last. I just don't have much tolerance for high-and-mighty, holier-than-thou tomes like this where the author makes it clear that anyone who bothered to graduate from college and get a real job is beneath her contempt. I don't know why people like this bother touring foreign places; their attitudes never change no matter what they see or who they meet. According to Dew, industrialization and capitalism = bad and they don't seem to get that capitalism and industrialization is what enables them to be able to tool around on their bikes while other people are working.
An encyclopaedia of cliches November 17, 2003
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Looking forward to a nice fat read, I found myself losing interest after the first 100 pages or so as Ms Dew served up cliche after cliche about Japan and the Japanese (Isn't Tokyo really big and aren't Japanese people really small?). One of the weaknesses of this book is the fact that Ms Dew has read several generic texts on Japan and now seems determined to regurgitate every last fact for our benefit. Another is Ms Dew's "auto-exotica"; her constant description of herself as a "mad gaijin" or "wild-eyed barbarian" is irritating in it's repetition, like a joke you have heard a hundred times. Similarly, she slips into the old, annoying foreigner-in-Japan habit of employing Japanese vocabulary for everyday English words (hence her bicycle is given the honour of becoming "jitensha" for the duration of the book). The latter half of this volume improves in that, having run out of generalisations, Ms Dew gets on with detailing the locations and people she encounters, and this she does beautifully. What a pity, then, to lapse every few pages into "don't the Japanese write funny things on their T-shirts"-mode. This book doesn't fail in it's mission because it never really decides what it's mission should be- is it a travelogue or a potted-Japan guide book. I bought it as the former and was disappointed when it included much of the latter too. Buy this book if Japan unknown to you- you'll enjoy it! If you are not a complete Japan novice, know that what you are getting here is some good and interesting anecdotal writing mixed with a hefty dose of everything you have read before. And the Bill Bryson comparisons? Hmm, I don't think so. Not even the female one.
Japan, magnet for brainless, aspiring travel writers... November 17, 2003
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is shockingly poor. The Japan I have lived in for 5 years (as an English teacher) bears no resemblance to the Japan depicted by this trite slab of pulp unworthy of its own binding. Sadly, I realise that this 'gaijin' fool - this blacksmith of gross cultural simplifications, this purveyor of only the best-known cliches - is not alone. Her inadequate, self-flattering account recalls anecdotes I hear from other English teachers. Faced with such defiant, cultural adversity, their love of cultural difference morphs into a reinforced belief in the superiority of their own culture. They love and yet they hate, so why do they stay? My advice to Josie Dew: on yer' bike, it's time to go home and stay home.
not good for swatting flies November 1, 2003
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
i disagree with the user below who said this book is good for swatting flies. it is too heavy--like nuking a flea. however, there are good things in this book. strangely though, it has nothing to do with china as one reader thought. i guess this is a very controversial book. her next one is about the same stuff 2 years later, but is bound to be even more controversial due to some pics of the author bathing au natural in it. it can be used for a door stop if you don't like it.
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