num_pages: 320
description: Adrift in Tokyo, translating obscene rap lyrics for giggling Japanese high school girls, "thirtynothing" Robert Twigger comes to a revelation about himself: He has never been fit nor brave. Guided by his roommates, Fat Frank and Chris, he sets out to cleanse his body and mind. Not knowing his fist from his elbow, the author is drawn into the world of Japanese martial arts, joining the Tokyo Riot Police on their yearlong, brutally demanding course of budo training, where any ascetic motivation soon comes up against bloodstained "white pyjamas" and fractured collarbones. In Angry White Pyjamas, Twigger blends, the ancient with the modern--the ultratraditionalism, ritual, and violence of the dojo (training academy) with the shopping malls, nightclubs, and scenes of everyday Tokyo life in the 1990s--to provide a brilliant, bizarre glimpse of life in contemporary Japan.
language: English
title: Angry White Pyjamas: A Scrawny Oxford Poet Takes Lessons from the Tokyo Riot Police
titlecomplete: Angry White Pyjamas: A Scrawny Oxford Poet Takes Lessons from the Tokyo Riot Police
genres: Adventure, Autobiography, Travel, Japan, Asia, Biography, Sports, Memoir, Martial Arts, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 1603
places: Japan
awards: awardedAt: 883641600000
name: Somerset Maugham Award, awardedAt: 883641600000
name: William Hill Sports Book of the Year
publisher: HarperEnt