Yowza! What can I say about this book? What should I say? Kenji is a tour guide for foreigners visiting Tokyo, but not your ordinary tour guide; he's a sex industry tour guide specializing in providing excursions into the many different type of sex clubs and shops in the sleazy part of town. His American client, Frank, seems a bit off... let me reword that... His American client, Frank, is seriously fried, screwed up beyond repair! You can hear his brain sizzling like the neon lights in the city. The tour guide slowly becomes the tourist as Frank teaches him a thing or two or five about life.

Written in the first person, Kenji convincingly describes the city and the sleaze. And you really start to feel Kenji's uneasiness and confusion planted and nurtured tenderly by Frank. Ryu Murakami amazingly passes that uneasy feeling to you, the reader, and before you know it things happen, things that will shock you, things that will be hard to erase from your memory. You soon feel that you're a witness to a horrible crime and there's not one damn thing you can do about it.

Last year I read Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates, a book about a serial killer from the serial killer's point of view. Let me just say that reading In the Miso Soup is more unsettling and more distressing. Just know what you're getting into before you read this book.

As for the title... it's a metaphor and only explained on the last page. I can tell you though it will not take away from your pleasure of slurping up a hot bowl of the soup. But if you're in Tokyo, in the Kabuki-cho district, you might want to think twice about going into omiai pub, or matchmaking pub. Lessons learned there may be impossible to forget, especially if you see a big American sitting in the corner.

With this book I have now read all of Ryu Murakami's English translated books. Whew... I need a break.

'When you're a kid, getting lost isn't just an event or a situation, it's like a career move. You get this thrill of anxiety and fear and a feeling that you've done something that can never be undone. My sense of myself, of my body, would become very shaky, and I'd feel like I was going to melt into the gray fog all around me. A lot of times I'd start screaming. But adults never pay any attention to a a little kid alone on the street just screaming - crying, maybe, but not screaming On this day I was mostly just afraid but still really excited. And then Mama appeared. All of a sudden she pulled up beside me in the car and said: 'Goodness, it's my little boy!' I started bawling, not because I was happy or relieved to see her but because I was scared. I felt like Mama had merged with the Unknown and must therefore be a completely different person. I thought I somehow had to find a way back to the world I knew, and when Mama went to take me in her arms I shook her off and tried to run away. I wasn't supposed to meet up with Mama here, I was only supposed to see her back in the real world, and so this woman couldn't be my real Mama even though she looked just liker her. So when she grabbed me again I bit her on the wrist, so hard that my jaw went numb. I didn't think I had any choice, I didn't know what else to do. Mama was yelling her head off. I guess I bit right through the skin where there was an artery or something, because blood started gushing out into my mouth, lots of it, and I was biting so hard I couldn't breathe, so I gulped it all down, like a baby nursing at its mother's breast, just sucking up the blood. I felt like I had to, like if I didn't drink it all up I'd suffocate. Have you ever swallowed somebody else's blood, Kenji?' ( )

Interesting comments on modern Japanese culture. The 'suspense' seems a bit cheesy and teen-horror at times though. But I think that's because I'm reading it from an occidental viewpoint - the anime-style cover reminded me that comic-books are massively popular in Japan, and this is kind of a comic-style book...without the pictures.... (must learn to think before I write) ( )

A fast adventurous read if you are drawn in or fascinated by the subject matter. We meet Kenji, a young fellow in Japan who takes foreigners on tours of the seedier side of Tokyo for extra income. Hookers, massage parlors, food; you name it, he will set you up. There is also a recent murder of a high school girl who was involved in "compensated dating"; another word for prostitution of sorts. Kenji then meets Frank, an American with a lot of oddities...and lies. What starts as an odd romp through the flesh underworld turns grisly as our suspicions of Frank comes to a head. His mannerisms and attitude grows more alarming and worse page by page. Murakami does not let up during the books most panicked scene and it will make you cringe. Plus there is a constant sense of danger looming as we are more and more suspicious of Frank. A really visual book with some interesting commentary on the modern world, hypocrisy, and double standards as well. This would make a great Miike movie. A great cringer from Murakami. ( )

Set in a strange, inaccessible quarter of Tokyo populated by prostitutes, strippers and low-lifes, Ryu Murakami presents an alien picture of the metropolis that becomes distinctly unsettling. Kenji, the book's main character must charter these waters for his customer, Frank - an odd and increasingly unnerving tourist whose constantly shifting lies cloud what may be murderous truths.

In the Miso Soup is both worthwhile and unsettling - threading through the story are concepts of detachment, alienation, cultural differences and the emptiness of the modern life. At times the novel feels like an odd form of display art, striking chords when it least tries. Frank becomes more and more unsettling throughout the novel, and although it is one gruesome and extremely violent section that will capture the attention, it is his bizarre, unpredictable and uninterpretable mood that makes him truly sinister and oddly hypnotic.

However, the author tries too hard. Frank becomes least interesting when he is supposed to be most dangerous (black eyes and blank looks are two over-used clichés). The main character, Kenji, and his girlfriend, Jun, are so average that their exchanges begin to feel like over-heard mobile phone conversations: realistic, but hardly interesting. Kenji himself is, in the main, bland and uninteresting and although the book is rich in vivid scenes, they can be matched by some forced, stilted paragraphs - how much of this is due to translation is one question, as there occasional phrases which manage to get the wrong end of the stick, e.g. "the popularity of foreigners ... has completely bottomed-out", but "bottomed-out" implies an upturn, so "hit rock bottom" may be more appropriate.

Ultimately "In the Miso Soup" may be an acquired taste: it is unusual, sometimes imperfect, often bursting with surprising flavours ... but it is definitely worth a try. ( )

Really quite dark modern chiller set in the sleazier size of tokyo, a sex tourist and his local guide showing what the city has to offer amidst a background of serial murder and mutilation. ( )