What I Talk About When I Talk About Reading

          

        About a month ago, I bought a Kindle Paperwhite from Amazon. In a display of goodwill, and to prove that my love of real books was still very much alive and well, I also bought a paperback memoir on the same order. Alright, to be honest, I bought the memoir in paper-form because it isn’t available on Kindle. And, also, because it was only 99 cents. The book in question is Hokkaido Highway Blues. A few chapters into Hokkaido Highway Blues, I knew two things: I knew that I wanted to write about it, even if it was just a quick review, and I knew I wanted all my friends to read it. Well, at least the ones presently living overseas.

 I’d like to set the scene for you. I presently live in Seattle (okay, the Seattle-area). I’m not currently an expat, although I have all the dreams and hopes and aspirations of a future expat, I am not presently that myself. To be honest, I feel a little like someone who’s been sitting in the plastic chairs at the DMV for twenty-minutes too long. You know the feeling? Things have delayed my departure. My number hasn’t been called. Shifty things have been going on behind the Plexiglas  walls that separate me from the government workers, I can hear them whispering and I see them casting furtive glances my way. Paperwork and discrepancies and this and that. Others have had their names called, they’ve come and gone, and in the meantime, I’ve been rifling through the waiting room literature. The waiting room literature, by the way, for one setting out on so specific a journey as teaching English in Japan, well, it’s sort of limited. There’s one pamphlet stuck into many different plastic shelves and on most coffee tables and side tables, the same thing over and over again, that pamphlet is Hokkaido Highway Blues.

Most of my Japan-minded friends say that they have seen this book, but none of them have read it. This is really frustrating to me because a.) this book is the best thing I’ve ever read about the experience of living as a foreigner in Japan and b.) I generally always discuss what I’m presently reading with my friends, and if I can, I get them to read what I’m reading so that we can discuss it even further. The more my mind interacts with another person’s mind on the same subject, the better I understand it. This is why I love my English major friends, because my relationships with them open up my mind to see so much more of what I’m already experiencing. When I asked my friends why they have not read this famous expat memoir, some of them simply shrugged and cited things like not having enough time, and some have flat-out baulked at the idea. The basic consensus among them has been, “I live in Japan (Asia). My life is this book. Why would I want to read something that simply states what I could already say?” It wasn’t until Jessie posted about my constant prodding her about the book that I understood why she’s been baulking. You see, it all comes down to why we read what we read and I’m just now realizing how rare it is that we talk about this.

I read to answer my own questions. To figure things out. It wasn’t until recently that I realized that that’s the primary purpose of the majority of the books on my shelf. I read to answer my questions about God, prayer, friends, grief , and writing (and writing, and writing, and writing).  I sometimes I read for entertainment, and to experience new things, but that’s not really the main reason why I read. I believe that the best way to understand life and things and people and ideas and heartache, is through stories. So, I read.

 I love Ferguson’s memoir because he’s so fair in regard to Japanese culture and people.  Sadly, I sometimes find that’s rare for expats in Asia. Ferguson has lived for five years in Japan when he sets out on his epic hitchhiking adventure, and he’s still trying to understand things and get a firm grasp on the Eastern mindset. And despite how much talking and blog reading and thinking I’ve done about Japan, and I’ve done it for a while (I lived in a Japanese house for 8 months in college, and spent two months in Tokyo in 2010, although I’ve never been an official “expat” the isolation and frustrations of being a Westerner surrounded by Japanese ideas is not foreign to me), despite my experiences and previous knowledge, I still found that Ferguson had new things to say to me, and new wisdom to impart, and dammit, he did his homework on Japanese culture and that, well, I think that’s admirable.

       Ferguson also actually knows how to write, and how to write well. For a travel writer, and even for a memoirist, that’s sometimes a really rare find. Creative Nonfiction is a relatively new genre (you could argue this, oh, I know you’re tempted to argue this), but it’s one of the fastest growing genres out there. The problem with that, of course, is that now everyone who feels like they’ve experienced anything feels that they have the God-given obligation to write a book about it. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: you’re not obligated. With a market so glutted with poorly written memoirs, I celebrate the few instances when I find a memoir that’s well written, thoughtful, and unique, and I feel like Ferguson’s memoir is all three. 
      So, why did I read it? Why did I find Ferguson's memoir so worthwhile? Surely there are other books to read, and surely Ferguson is only going to say what I'm constantly hearing from my friends. But here's the thing, what if it's not the same. What if, God forbid, he has something (even slightly) new to say? Isaac Newton is quoted as having once said, If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. 
       I guess I read because I'd rather not make the same mistakes that were made by the ones who went before me. I read because life is hard enough on it's own, why go at it alone and unprepared when maybe there's someone who went before me, someone who I can learn from. And isn't it by stories that we learn? And isn't there even just a slight bit of hubris in saying that nobody could possibly experience a situation differently or more profoundly than you? 

         By the way, I have the unfortunate habit of nearly-always never reading the forward or prologue of a book. Because of this, I’ve actually just this morning discovered that the version of Hokkaido Highway Blues that I read is actually the abridged edition. The original edition was published in 1998, and it’s 90 pages longer than the edition that I read.