A marvelous glimpse of the Japan that rarely peeks through the country's public image.-Washington Post Book World
An illuminating book.-The Economist
Alan Booth has given us a memorable, oddly beautiful book.-Asian Wall Street Journal
Fluent in the language, well-informed and disabused, [Booth] is in the fine tradition of hard-to-please travelers like Norman Douglas, Evelyn Waugh, and V.S. Naipaul. A sharp eye and a good memory for detail...give an astonishing immediacy to his account.-Frank Tuohy, Times Literary Supplement
Alan Booth was not only the best travel writer on Japan, but one of the best travel writers in the English language.-Ian Buruma, author of The Wages of Guilt
[Booth] achieved an extraordinary understanding of life as it is lived by ordinary Japanese....Frequently brilliant in his insights.-F.G. Notehelfer, The New York Times Book Review
One of the best foreign observers of Japan today...his book is unsurpassed.-Far Eastern Economic Review
To Travel with Alan Booth is to travel in very civilized company indeed, but also close to the ground. He has a mind that illuminates and enlivens everything it encounters.-Nigel Barley, author of The Innocent Anthropologist
Booth's capacity for rueful, discerning observation will keep him in the front ranks of travel writers for years to come.-Kirkus
