Tokyo Junkie

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Robert Whiting. Tokyo Junkie

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PRAISE FOR TOKYO JUNKIE

“A glorious love letter to the world’s greatest city. . . . Will take its place next to classics by Lafcadio Hearn, Edward Seidensticker, Donald Richie, and Ian Buruma that succeed in articulating the hold that Japan has on the hearts of so many of us gaijin.” R. Taggart Murphy, author of Japan and the Shackles of the Past and The Weight of the Yen

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Most Japanese had some exposure to English, which was taught from middle school on. Missing from the curriculum built around grammar and translation, however, were conversation skills. Private English conversation schools proliferated to fill the gap. There were in fact more schools than there were teachers to staff them, with the result that ten-year-old American students at private schools in the city were also taking part-time work as English “teachers” to Japanese adults.

Thus, it was that, needing more funds to finance the increasing amount of time I was spending in the city, I found myself joining the ranks of those American ten year olds.

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