Read it RIGHT NOW Redcatlady. Don't look back. If I twist my ankle or fall and injure myself in any way, do NOT stop. Just go. Go without me. Save yourself.
Seriously, though, I'm rooting around my office at the moment trying to find my marked-up copy. I have a pristine copy and one with lots of highlights and dog-ears, and the HELPFUL one isn't here. For now I'd say, just go, see how it grabs you, come back, talk. Because it's more narrative than anything, a lot of the more "discussion"-oriented info is going to appear almost by happenstance.
The book is something easily knocked off on a lazy Saturday. I had hoped it would get a little bit denser information-wise — I learned about it from a discussion on "Fresh Air" that I think, retrospectively, had more "big issues" discussion about the book than the book had itself, painting it as more of a journalistic ethnography — but for the most part it stays a breezy part-thriller, part-memoir, part urban-anthro. I'm very interested in seeing what you and others take from it, because being a little more familiar than normal with Japan made some of it less shocking. I'm also trying to get someone I know who's a journalist in Japan to answer some questions about the opacity of public services in Japan.
