Customer Rating:  
Summary: It is true...as each story represents a certain countercultural type.
Comment: The books does offer some very good insights into Japanese culture, many between the lines.
I have met a few escort girls, they are very much like the woman in the book. I have even had a drink or two with a couple of speed tribe members, and they are very much like the book's description. There is a lot of truth in this book, and shows the dirtier side of Japanese culture. Every culture has such "low-lifes", and tries to hide them. Japan is just more aggressive about it. Consider this a look under the hood, at the grimier parts of the culture, that are nevertheless part of what makes it run.s.
The only criticism I have is that it is getting a bit dated. We need a new speed tribes book, to cover some of the latest issues.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, with a few problems.
Comment: I picked this up used, and read it very quickly - it reminded me of one of those so/so CDs from a usually great band: all the great stuff stacked at the beginning, with an increasingly less interesting wind-down.
Greenfeld isn't the greatest writer, or journalist, or sociologist out there, which is the main issue - each of these pieces has great potential, but several of them fail to achieve liftoff.
I also questioned some of the intent here - I'm guessing that one of Greenfeld's goals was to upend some stereotypes Westerners (primarily) have about Japan, and perhaps he achieves this - but this is no ground-breaker either: for all of the non-Japanese writers on Japan who have turned the place into an imagined museum of Zen and lotus-blossoms, there are equal numbers of people (from filmmakers Nagisa Oshima and Shohei Imamura to novelist Kobo Abe) who have done the same sort of stereotype-busting that Greenfeld is attempting. And some of these folks have done it much, much better.
Not awful by any means, but it really didn't live up to any of its' pretenses.
-David Alston
Customer Rating:
Summary: antisocial studies
Comment: Fascinating look at different groups of Japanese youth culture in the early to mid 90s. We peer into the lives of 12 people, including: a mid-level Yakuza debt collector; a porn star and director looking for a big score; students cramming for entry to the University of Tokyo; a hot young 20something caught between club culture and the traditional arranged-marriage culture of her parents; an obsessive computer nerd; and more. Each chapter is presented as a narrative and is also supplemented by sociological and historical information, which makes for a quick, engaging read. It's all fairly nihilistic, though - Japan of the 90s is a fragmented, contradictory culture, and it's not surprising to see why some of these people have carved out such peculiar, stilted lifestyles.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good...outdated
Comment: There seems to be alot of debate on if this book is fact or fiction. FICTION.
It is set in 90's Japan and tries to give a sence of different aspects of the country, but if you are looking for a view of modern Japan I wouldn't look here. Japan has changed alot since the book was written.
The stories are for the most part very entertaining, and the book is great light reading.
Book consists of short stories about different kinds of folk in Japan you don't see on the news.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Insightful
Comment: Well, the Library of Congress classified this book as Subculture - Japan - Case Studies, and having read it, I am relatively sure that it is a work of nonfiction. One reviewer claimed that parents would *never* tout the merits of their child at an omiai, yet in "Pink Samurai: Love, Marriage and Sex in Contemporary Japan" Nicholas Bornhoff writes extensively on just this topic. According to Bornhoff, virtually all that happens at an omiai is that parents go on and on about their children's accomplishments ad nauseum. The "date" (which is meant to culminate in arranged marriage) is more like a particularly boring, traditional job interview in which the resume is the main topic under discussion. No wonder "Keiko Nakagami" (perhaps a pseudonym, but nevertheless most likely a living person whom Greenfeld *interviewed*) kept thinking about the Australian she met at a club the other night! Anyway, for those who still have doubts about the book's authenticity, reread the chapter "Dai: The Motorcycle Thief" which is full of interview quotations regarding his "observation period" at a juvenile rehabilitation facility. If this is fiction, this is the most realistic fiction I've ever read ...
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