num_pages: 221
description: SWEET DARUMA a Japan satire Magda is thrilled to leave her globalization-protesting boyfriend in Toronto and head to Tokyo to teach English conversation…or so she thinks. Upon her arrival she is whisked off to save the life of a suicidal salaryman with the help of a strategic idiom. Magda has unwittingly joined the Anne of Grey Tokyo Emergency English Response Team, and she better brush up her vocabulary in a hurry, because the English emergencies keep coming. Suddenly caught up in the politics of English and pop culture in Japan, Magda soon realizes to expect the unexpected. She's now the student—and Japan definitely has a lot to teach. "From Orgasm Kabuki to troll girls in the pee trade, stackable Daruma apartments to a mute monkey named Kagemusha, Janice Valerie Young has written an irreverent send-up of the warped world of English conversation schools (and the zany international staff that fuel them) that is as imaginative and over-the-top as Tokyo itself. Strike up the chindonya, this girl can write!"" —Leza Lowitz, author of Green Tea to Go "Janice Valerie Young's absurdist satire of the turn-of-the-millennium Japanese pop culture and post-bubble society trots out an outrageous cast of characters, from Yakuza wannabes to Yamamba urine sellers and a particularly disgusting pet monkey…a mélange not seen since Thomas Pynchon's ‘whole sick crew’." —Hillel Wright, author of Rotary Sushi ****** Cover illustration by Wayne Wilson
language: English
title: Sweet Daruma: a Japan satire
titlecomplete: Sweet Daruma: a Japan satire
ratings_count: 2
publisher: Iuniverse Inc