- The Only Gaijin in the Village, by Iain Maloney. Polygon. $24.95.
Iain Maloney welcomes the reader to a land of curried horse-meat donuts and whale bacon, a place where locals nominate prime firefly viewing spots and form teams to pick up a few flecks of garbage.
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Snakes, boar, centipedes and bees comprise real and present dangers.
Noticing what others are doing is raised to the stature of an "Olympic sport".
This quirkily odd landscape is a half-acre lot in the Gifu area of rural Japan, to which a Scot in his 30s decided to move with his Japanese wife.
Maloney, who has lived in Japan since 2005, started this book as columns three years ago.
For the pair of them, "the idea of space, of greenness, of silence and solitude resonated like a temple bell".
The Only Gaijin in the Village warrants its transformation into a book.
Maloney seems quite familiar with the usual tricks involved in impersonating an innocent abroad.
He is consistently self-deprecatory, laughing at himself a little more than the locals themselves mock him.
He regularly runs into whimsical characters, each given a cameo to illustrate a quiddity or two in Japanese life.
We are meant to be amused at the foreigners' lack of proficiency, tact and finesse.
As a bonus, Maloney includes a five-page glossary of esoteric Japanese terms, including the derivation for the expression, "head honcho".
Unhappily, no maps or photographs find their way between the covers.
Those are time-worn tropes, redeemed by Maloney's curiosity, his good humour and his commitment to avoid "unoriginal hobby horses" in describing another culture.
His frequent technique is to state a declaratory proposition, then elaborate and explain by example.
"The first rule of living in Japan is: show willingness".
Or, "the Japanese language has a strange relationship with colour".
My favourite remains Maloney's insistence that Japan is "the only place where honest description of haggis is met with 'sounds nice, where can I get some?'"
In fact, the weak elements in Maloney's book have nothing to do with Japan.
He inserts a few too many jibes at Trump, recollections of his youth in Scotland, and English-style humour.
When he re-focuses on Gifu, praising his fire pits, pruning his trees, joking about his neighbours, Maloney is on far stronger ground.
Japan may be sliding sedately and painlessly through a glide-path towards decline, but nobody as yet seems to have been told the bad news in Gifu.
