a highly successful businessman; his wife, Yukiko, is the model of the perfect Japanese wife; their daughter, Junko, is rapidly approaching an age where marriage is literally mandatory, lest she lose both her job and her place in the social order. For six months Ms. Muller enjoys the hospitality of the Tanakas--with mixed results--and in so doing finds part of the essence of Japan. To find the rest, she leaves their prosperous home (under difficult circumstances) and settles into a run-down apartment on a crowded alley in Osaka maintained by a gay American expatriate who, like many of the "gaijin", earns his living by teaching English. Capitalizing on her new-found freedom from the strict social restraints of the Tanaka home, Ms. Muller sets out on a variety ofadventures throughout the Japanese countryside, making friends, exploring, and occasionally pressing herself to the very limits of her physical endurance, all the while searching for the elusive Wa. She tracks down an obscure mountain cult, attends a variety of local festivals, and finally sets out on a 700-mile pilgrimage to some 88 Buddhist temples in honor of Kobo Daishi, the patron saint of Japan, in a final, desperate quest for that "elusive inner peace . . . (t)his pilgrimage is my last hope." That she finds it in a completely unexpected place and in a completely accidental manner is a fitting and appropriate ending to this joyous and absorbing tale. I highly recommend this book, and the documentary film as well.

Suzanne2018-12-08 01:32

"Our differences are obvious from the very