News of a new book set in the contemporary city. The Kindle version on amazon japan has a discount for ¥988. Here’s the press release, which is a model of marketing. We’ll carry a review of the book later in the year…

Lovesic in Kyoto

Seen through the lens of Buddhist wisdom, Lovesic in Kyoto is a captivating journey through spirit, language, musicianship, and the beauty and contradictions of modern-day Japan. From racing through New York City subways to riding his bicycle past kimono-clad maiko in Kyoto, author/expatriate Jay Crystall shares the colorful, twisting path that led him to Japan. Told with wit and candor and backlit by myriad lessons, hilarious faux pas, and the slippery slope of self-discovery, he begins to unfold a lifelong dream of impacting culture. 

Seattle, WA – Lovesic in Kyoto: Building Understanding Between the United States and Japan – Authors Jay Crystall and Catherine Lenox announce publication of their newest book, Lovesic in Kyoto. Rated number one in its category on Amazon.com, the book shares real life experiences of the Japanese people and their culture and dispels myths Westerners may carry about them as seen through the eyes of an expatriate from the U.S. Since author Jay Crystall hasn’t been in Japan long, he sees it with fresh, perceptive and often hilarious eyes. He’s foraged into a foreign land of his own volition, braved purchase of an English school, created a curriculum based on cultural exploration, real life role-play and music, and started a psychedelic rock band with musical elements drawn from all corners of the globe. He’s done that in seven short years, something that takes many people a lifetime to do if they are even brave enough to try it. With wit and candor, he shares these experiences and perceptions about it in the book. How authors Jay Crystall and Catherine Lenox met, decided to write the book, and proceeded to create it has been its own delightful story, too.

In April 2014, Catherine went to an art show opening at a new contemporary art gallery while visiting Kyoto, Japan from Seattle, Washington. As she’d swept through the room admiring abstract LED sculptures, mirrors, and landscape photos, she’d noticed a guy who looked noticeably out of place in that sea of Japanese artists and friends. Standing in one of the concrete cube rooms in the stark white gallery, a good head taller and broader than most of the other people there, he’d grinned ear-to-ear and gestured larger than life. His smile had literally filled the room. Curious how he happened to be there, she’d bounded enthusiastically up to him and introduced herself. Catherine and Jay immediately recognized each other as friends with a common appreciation of Japan and friended each other on Facebook.  Neither of them knew at the time that Jay’s Buddhist practice, founded in the concept of being in rhythm with the universe and with what he calls “Original Good,” was already at work toward writing Lovesic in Kyoto. The essence and meaning of Original Good, a phrase Jay had coined 20 years ago for a song, is based on the Buddhist concept of seeing the essential goodness and potential in ourselves and others. If we stay true to it, see it and feel it, and consciously exert ourselves to draw out the innate goodness in everything around us and in us, we connect directly to a divine force for good. Wonderful things happen. The book, Lovesic in Kyoto, is an outgrowth of that philosophy.

Over the past four years, Jay and Catherine have developed a solid virtual friendship, talking over Facebook chat, cell phones, from his school to her office, over 5,000 miles and from a huge ocean of distance away to craft their book. The time zone difference has been tricky. Jay’s been perky and energetic while talking with Catherine during the day from his school while she’s been bleary-eyed from her side of the world late at night. She’s been energized and awake while he, bleary-eyed, has talked with her during his late hours. They’ve both lost a lot of sleep and probably aged more than a bit in the process. But they’ve also been each other’s cheerleaders during the challenges and championed each other’s writing and insights. They’ve been each other’s confidants when life got tough. They’ve celebrated each other’s successes. They’ve been weary but they’ve kept going. Revision after revision has flown through the airways back and forth. Recordings of music and chat have passed incessantly through their computers. Incomplete and incorrect transcriptions from a transcription service have given them both more than a few puzzles and giggles. All this between two people who have only truly met each other in person once. It’s been quite an adventure.

Thousands of hours later, they have created a work that is a testament to their mutual admiration of and fascination with Japan and a “love song” to how experiencing Japan has made them both better people. They’ve grown much through the experience and one of the big gifts of the process is they’ve garnered a great friendship and created a work they both feel represents their fondness for Japan. Read Lovesic in Kyoto. Discover the vibrant, sometimes quirky, new Kyoto as seen through the eyes of a recently landed expatriate.

Book review by Josh Yates

People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo – and the Evil by Richard Lloyd Parry (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2012,454pp)

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“Japan’s a safe country”

“Women can walk around in the middle of the night and not worry”

These are common enough stereotypes that you might even hear from an ex-pat who has spent a number of years living in Japan, and they hold some truth.

But darkness can be found even in the land of the rising sun.

Richard Lloyd Parry knows it too, maybe as well as anyone, after working the Tokyo beat as a journalist starting in 1995. Parry had as close a view of the crimes surrounding the disappearance of Lucie Blackman and the insane, unbelievable if it hadn’t been true, investigation and trial that followed.

For anyone unfamiliar with the case, a bit of background (I’ll avoid major spoilers, but the book itself is far more than just the details anyway), Lucie Blackman was a young English woman who went missing while living and working in Tokyo in the year 2000. This led to the revelation for her family that in actuality Lucie had been working at a hostess club, far from the type of work her parents had pictured.

Now, hostesses are not sex workers, but the work certainly involves the selling of a sexual image at the very least, as well as almost always selling your time outside the clubs to date and spend time with important customers.

When it became apparent that something very odd was happening, Lucy’s family rushed to Tokyo in an attempt to pressure the police to do more. This begins the story that will lead to battles between the Blackmans and the Japanese Police, the narrowing down of a suspect, and the eventual, though delayed, finding of a young woman’s body.

Simple cut and dried case?

Not at all.

There are so many twists and turns along the way that I’m not sure any critic would want to even attempt to list them. All the detail gives us a heavy book, but, if I haven’t hinted enough already, one that a reader will not want to skip a single page of, or put down for any longer than it takes to get some sleep.

Parry shows an ability to take a jumble of information and put it all down in a way for the reader to feel that they haven’t missed anything, but haven’t been bogged down either. The writing is fluid, intelligent, and always intriguing. Parry leads us on an incredible walk, one in which we often want to close our eyes but take peeks between the slits of our fingers to catch a glimpse of the monster.

And what a monster it is… but I did promise not to spoil anything, didn’t I.

Suffice it to say that Parry found a character in Joji Obara who belongs in the works of Thomas Harris.

However, maybe the most incredible part of this book is that the darkness eater and his horrible crimes don’t become the sole focus. Instead, at least two more amazing stories emerge.

Parry spends a large part of the book humanizing Lucy’s father, who might have been easily tossed aside as a 2D minor villain or a simple schmuck. While the news reporters at the time seemed to have decided that Tim Blackman was not the grieving father he ought to have been, Parry doesn’t leave it at that but spends time filling in blanks and painting the full picture that was glossed over too often in the media coverage.

Finally, along with all of that, Parry is able to wind in the story of the Tokyo police. Are they misunderstood by the foreign media? Highly Inept? Or playing a game to which only they know the rules? Along with all the other wonderful points that make this book worth recommending, anyone interested in the case of Carlos Ghosn might find it a valuable insight into the workings of Japanese police investigation and the criminal process as a whole.

This is a remarkable book, and Parry is a worthy journalist and author. In his later work, Ghosts of the Tsunami, Parry took the deaths of thousands and found individual stories within all the suffering. Here, with just one young woman’s death (oh, but maybe not!), Parry finds the bigger story.

A masterpiece of true crime writing.

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See here for the Wikipedia page of Richard Lloyd Parry