Japan at first hand: her islands, their people, the picturesque, the real, with latest facts and figures on their war-time trade expansion and commercial outreach Book

I mainly focused his own story and the story of Lafcardio Hearn, an American coming to Japan at the end of 19 centuries when the country was undergoing dramatic changes in both its power and modernization. I skimmed the other five stories but still found them interesting. I like how the author organizes the five stories and his personal narratives in a parallel way in five chapters all named after Japanese cities. With the transient experience both living in the states and in Vietnam as a foreigner who is inevitable preoccupied by its own imagination/ illusion about the unfamiliar lands prior to the real exposure, I can empathize the same curiosity, anxiety, frustration, and reluctance when the real encounter came as the author telling his experience moving and struggling in Japan. Throughout the five stories, I found an unchanged core despite the unique forms of various stories, that is the essential question how people raised in one culture sense, feel, react and readjust when they are encountering another culture, plus the geographical barriers of departing your homeland, leaving friends, families and all the surroundings they were familiar with and felt comfortable to.