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Title: Lost in Japan
Review: This was an easy read, full of colourful characters and it held my attention although in the end I found it rather sad - pathetic even. It certainly did not make me want to take up Aikido and I didn't feel much in common with the author. Twigger is , I guess, a very clever guy but at the same time I feel that he is a bit of a thug and rather a wastrel. He may have learned Aikido but he didn't learn much Japanese or much about Japan - in fact I found the book curious: every other book on Japan which I have read written by a foreigner betrays the author's love for the country (even if that is laced with some fairly strong criticisms). Twigger betrays no such emotion - I got the impression that he took virtually nothing away from his time in the country. I thought that his descriptions of Japanese food, which he dismisses as horrible, reminiscent of the caricature of the English xenophobe and his other insights on Japanese society were not very insightful.
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