Reviews for The roads to Sata

The average rating for The roads to Sata based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-03-06 00:00:00 Cheryl Hill 'The Roads to Sata' is a minor travel classic and is the tale of Alan Booth's walk from Cape Sota, in Hokkaido, the northernmost island in Japan, to Cape Sata in Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's four major islands--a distance stretching over 3200 kilometers. Booth made this four-month trek in 1977. Roads to Sata is revered by many Asian travel writers, and for good reason. It is held in high-esteem because Booth was a superb writer and astute observer, as well as an erudite man who wore his vast erudition lightly. Booth died from colon cancer at age of 46, but left us with a couple books of sublime travel writing . Perhaps of all the travel writers who have scribbled musings about Japan, Booth may have come the closest in helping Western readers to understand that Japan can never really be understood. Implicit in Booth's book is the notion that while cultures can be described and experienced, perhaps none can be fully fathomed. Booth is the spiritual progeny of Lafcadio Hearn, another Westerner who lived many years in Japan and wrote with percipience about its culture. Perhaps what sets writers like Hearn and Booth apart is that they wrote almost solely out of curiosity and wonder, and did not start out with the mindset that Japan even needed to be understood. One thing I liked in particular about The Roads to Sata is that Booth did not begin his book by giving any profound reasons for why he was undertaking this walk. No relationship had ended and he was not in the throes of some spiritual crisis that compelled him to journey two-thousand miles on foot to "sort out" his life. Booth loves Japan, and loves to wander and observe. At the time his travels began he had already been living in Tokyo for six years and was married to a Japanese wife. Booth grudgingly submits to an interview with a dogged Japanese reporter. When asked why he made the trip, Booth gives what I believe was an uncharacteristically pat justification: Reporter--"Why did you decide to do it (make the trip) in the first place?" Booth--"Because I'd lived in Japan for a quarter of my life and still didn't know whether I was wasting my time. I hoped that by taking four months off to do nothing but scrutinize the country I might come to grips with the business of living here, and get a clearer picture, for better or worse." Reporter: "Have you managed to do that?" Booth: "No." Booth was also not shy to express his feelings about how well a foreigner could adjust to living in Japan: Reporter: "Do you feel at home in Japan?" Booth: "No, I think it would be a particularly thick-skinned foreigner who was able to do that." Don't let Booth's supposed explanation fool you. He was also a newspaper reporter, and knew that reporters love sensible or provocative answers. All one has to do is read his book to realize that his reply about why he did the walk was pro forma. Booth is actually something of a curmudgeon, in the best sense of that word. A couple themes that continually emerge throughout his journey include Japan's sometimes extreme xenophobia. Booth speaks fluent Japanese so is able to eavesdrop on conversations about him by unsuspecting Japanese, some of whom seem to have a prejudice that NO foreigner could ever learn to speak Japanese. He is laughed at and ridiculed by the natives and is often chased by groups of youth throwing taunts at him and mocking him if he does speak to them in Japanese. Booth also stays at ryokans, traditional Japanese Inns that usually offer "rustic" lodging and simple meals of fish and rice. Booth is often turned away at some ryokans because of being a gaijin (foreigner), or the innkeeper being unable to speak English or fearing Booth will not like the Japanese fare or will not be able to eat with chopsticks. Booth also consistently notes how littered Japan was, along its coasts, its highways and even at sacred shrines. Booth loves to take dips in the ocean and several times emerges covered with oil or cutting himself on some sharp piece of detritus a previous visitor thoughtlessly left behind. In fairness to what I've written above, Booth recounts numerous positive encounters with Japanese during his 128-day sojourn. Booth determines before his journey that he will accept no rides on any sort of conveyance except those necessary to take him from one island to another, i.e., ferries and trains. Booth's journey is not always the bucolic Appalachian trail journey of Bill Bryson's 'A Walk in the Woods.' Much of Booth's trip is alongside major highways and involves sometimes perilous excursions through long tunnels where he occasionally comes close to being sideswiped by speeding vehicles. On many occasions, especially in inclement weather, Booth is offered rides by kindly Japanese, some of whom get quite chaffed when he explain to them that he prefers to walk. And Booth often looked pretty shopworn from hours trudging along polluted thoroughfares. Likewise, he is treated to many random acts of kindness during his travels. Strangers take the time and trouble to find a ryokan that will shelter him for the night. And he is welcomed at many drinking establishments where he is fond of singing Japanese folk songs, much to the amusement and delight of the locals. What Booth shows us without needing to tell us is that Japan is not inscrutable due to some misguided Western notion of "Orientalism," as Edward Said called it in his book about Western attitudes to Asians. Instead, Booth depicts a Japan filled with the usual array of characters that comprise any large nation. The people may share a culture with some customs and traditions perplexing to Westerners (and some other Asian lands as well), but, as Booth notes: "I have tried to avoid generalizations, particularly 'the Japanese.' " The Japanese are 120,000,000 people, ranging in age from 0 to 119, in geographical location across 21 degrees of latitude and 23 of longitude, and in profession from emperor to urban guerilla. This book is about my encounters with some twelve hundred businessmen, farmers, grandmothers, fishermen, housewives, shopkeepers, schoolchildren, soldiers, policemen, monks, priests, tourists, journalists, professors, laborers, maids, waiters, carpenters, teachers, innkeepers,potters, dancers, cyclists, students, truck drivers, Koreans, Americans, bar hostesses, professional wrestlers, government officials, hermits, drunks and tramps." Read 'The Roads to Sata' and you will encounter all the above and more. The great Japanese haiku poet Matsuo Basho, himself an inveterate wanderer, the early 20th Century tanka poet Ishikawa Takuboku, the famous Kabuki play 'Kanjincho,' Eiheji, Soto Buddhist temple of the brilliant Zen master Dogen. Think of not thinking. How do you think of not thinking? By not thinking. Zen Master Dogen (1200-1253) You'll also encounter Shinto shrines, Japan's officially designated "Three most beautiful places" and be with Booth as he encounters the kaleidoscopic range of humanity mentioned in his quote. It's a trip worth taking.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-10-30 00:00:00 ROB THOMAS When I first visited Japan twenty five years ago children would point at me and shout “Gaijin da! Gaijin da!” – “Look, a foreigner! A foreigner!”. If I walked round a Kyoto temple whole classes of middle school students would crowd around to have their picture taken and practice their English. I was just like a film star. Of course, I didn’t let it go to my head. Not in the slightest. Well, 2015 is the first year Japan has seen a tourist surplus since the fifties; more people spent money visiting Japan than the Japanese spent travelling abroad. It’s been well over a decade since anyone pointed their finger at me and shouted “Gaijin da! Gaijin da”. I haven’t been refused entry to tiny backstreet bars nor praised for being able to use chopsticks so well for just as long. I’m just not special any more. But when I feel nostalgic and want to return to the times when, as a foreigner in Japan, I was just that little bit out of the ordinary I can pick up Alan Booth’s outstanding travelogue recounting his trip walking the length of Japan back in the 1980s. Free of references to cosplay, piccachu, AKB48 or kawaii things in general I can return to a more simple time, a time when, as Alan Booth relates, a fluent Japanese speaking foreigner used to be able to have long debates with hotel owners about whether or not they could speak Japanese; a time when a foreign guest would have to explain that they had lived in Japan for a decade, understood Japanese customs and manners and were able to digest fish, which was also widely available as a foodstuff outside Japan, before they could even think of getting a room. These days Japanese hotel owners will let foreigners stay at their hotels regardless of how well they understand Japanese language, etiquette, culture or history simply in return for paying the bill. How things have changed and how I miss the old days.