Japanland: A Year in Search of Wa Book

Japanland is a fierce, funny account of a filmmaker's desire to experience the harmony, or "wa," she believes is found in traditional Japanese culture. Muller lives in Japan for one year, staying with a modern host family in suburban Tokyo for five months and in a variety of other locations for the rest of her time in the country. She wrangles with the transportation system, learns about the ancient arts of swordmaking and pottery, encounters "New Human Beings," tries to be a geisha for a day, fails in her attempts to plant a garden and, most hilariously, stays in a monastery before going on a particularly ill-fated Buddhist pilgrimage.

It's not a typical travelogue. Japanland reads more like a cross between the candid diary of Lucy Ricardo and the wry social commentary of Cornelia Otis Skinner. I found the narrative hysterically funny, yet touching. Muller is the exact opposite of introspective: trying to cope on a daily basis leaves her no time for philosophizing and she cheerfully admits to her shortcomings, just as I believe I would in her situation. Having just finished reading Claire Dederer's yoga memoir "Poser" I couldn't help making comparisons, and sorry, Dederer comes up short again.