TOO LATE FOR THE FESTIVAL

An engaging recounting of a Hewlett-Packard employee’s year-plus stint in Japan. Paine is a Californian who had lived in England, toured in Europe, and saw herself as a “Sophisticated World Traveler.” Lured to Japan a decade ago by Hewlett-Packard’s offer of a “suitcase stuffed with money” to serve as a technical writer on a special project, she realized immediately that she would not blend into this crowd as she had in England. Dubious about the food, uncomfortable in crowds, inept with the language, and bored at work because her assignment was postponed, she felt she would always be a gaijin, an “outsider person,” to the Japanese. With her co-workers glued to their computer terminals on other aspects of the project, she tried to keep herself busy writing haiku on such subjects as cornflakes, attending meetings, and keeping up an e-mail correspondence. Both rebellious (she was late for work) and concerned about offending (she tried to curb her propensity to boast), she remained ambivalent about Japanese culture and frustrated by the complex language (there are more than a hundred ways to name seven objects). But her colleagues gently guided and befriended her, one wooing her away from the computer to dance under the falling petals of cherry blossoms. She also studied Japanese history to better understand the nation’s willingness to submerge individuality for the greater good and experienced a brief spiritual transcendence during a visit to a Shinto shrine. That was followed by an acute bout of self-consciousness about her body, large, pale, and awkward relative to the graceful people surrounding her. Finally back in California, where her suitcase full of money bought her dental caps, contact lenses, and a house, she thought often with gratitude of her sensitive and solicitous Japanese friends. Amusing, sometimes touching account of how Japan’s formal and conventional culture beguiled a spontaneous and independent American.