I found this book to be believable, fascinating, enlightening, and way better than I had expected it to be. I've been looking for some books that would highlight the real contemporary culture in Japan. I've not found many so far that were worth recommending. Jake's account of his time as a reporter in Japan provided a great medium to write about some key aspects of the Japanese mind and society. You would do much better reading this book than most of the travel guides that are out there.

I lived in Japan for a couple of years recently. There were many things that were uncovered in this book that I knew about while I was there, but I didn't know the backstory. Even the little things. When I first got to Japan and set up a Citibank Japan account, I could not access money in it for a few months because of some regulatory problem that the bank was having with the authorities there. It turns out that it was all connected to the Yakuza and money laundering.

I could go on and on, but I won't. This was a great read. I'll just warn that he writes about many of the very dark sides of Japan in often graphic ways.