I spent six months as a teacher in Nagano, Japan, twenty years ago. I regret that I left the country in such haste, and I long to return - but as a teacher in Poland, it would take me years to save up just for the airfare. Instead, I like to read accounts like this from other foreigners in Japan.

This is a good book, but as other reviewers have suggested, it could have been so much better. The first half was the most fascinating, as it covered experiences similar to my own when I worked for GEOS; the second feels like a patchwork of vignettes, and there's even repetition between the chapters as if Broad thought that we'd forget about Ken Watanabe's cafe if it hadn't been mentioned for twenty pages. While the first half is immediately relatable, the part about Broad's adventures as a YouTuber is much less so - these are experiences available to only the very lucky few, and I feel that if Broad had taken a different approach here, the story would have worked better. Ironically, that different approach would have been the more Japanese approach - that of slowing down, letting the images settle, and giving the account the space to breathe that it so clearly needed. ( )

Not bad but really a promotional vehicle for a YouTube Channel of the same name. A series of anecdotes of life in Japan from a young man there as an English language teaching assistant but who with considerable determination and hard work established a successful video making career. Nevertheless, an addition to the large volume of 'isn't Japan curious' books. ( )