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I picked this up one day from a secondhand book shop because it had an intriguing premise: Peter Carey, famous Australian author (among other things, he is the author of the novel True History of the Kelly Gang, which I really want to read someday) who is based in New York City, takes his 12-year-old son to Tokyo for a week after his son declares that he is going to live in Japan someday. Charlie is interested in Japanese manga and anime, not kabuki theatre and temple architecture. So he gets his dad to promise that they will visit the Real Japan, which they do. They meet a young Japanese boy who speaks English (I guess in Tokyo, anything is possible) who shows them some way-off-the-beaten-track aspects of Japanese life. There is a bit of Japanese theatre, despite Charlie's loud protests, and if I recall correctly, Carey gets away at one point by himself to visit one temple or something like that. But mostly there is anime and yakuza and comics and Mr. Donut. It's a short book, and you don't have to be a Japanophile to appreciate it. It's a fun read with a number of laugh-out-loud moments. ( )

an account of peter carey's trip to japan with his 12-year-old son to explore the world of japanese anime and manga. it seems that all peter carey found in japan is disappointment and irritation. this would be fine, if he could turn those findings into an interesting book with any sort of insight. when i wasn't waiting for him to really get into it, i was busy being irritated and offended. (also annoyed with the translation/transliteration errors.) it seems to me that all of his disappointment comes not from japan itself, but from being told that all of his show-offy theories of the effects of WWII, Commodore Perry, and Hiroshima on anime are all incorrect. he randomly injects long blocks of text from other sources about japan, presumably to give the book some sort of historical depth. carey admits that he was wrong about japan, as the title suggests, but he also does not take seriously any of the explanations he receives from the japanese he interviews. i got the sense that once he knew he was wrong, he wasn't interested in learning more so he could be right. if he spent less time talking about his theories and examining, or even just depicting, what was actually there, it would have made for a much more interesting book. i wonder why and how he decided his obviously unfulfilling and disappointing trip would be a topic with enough meat for a 100-something page book. ( )

I picked up this book for a laugh. Also to be "edutained", but it turned out to be more entertaining than educating as a travel book. "Wrong About Japan" proves Noel Coward right when he said about tourism: "Why do the wrong people travel, when the right people stay at home?".

And of course, what makes the book compelling is the stubbornness of Peter Carey in his attempts to understand the meaning of Anime and Manga, through visits to creators and producers of such artforms. He always misunderstands the main purpose these creators and producers had in mind.

The shocking truth behind the origins of Gundam Wing as something designed to sell toy robots is hard for Peter Carey to stomach, but as a veteran cartoon show watcher, having seen what Transformers was as a franchise, it's not that impossible to imagine that this was the truth with Gundam Wing.

Yet Peter Carey never gives up in his mistaken belief he understands Anime and Manga, and therefore Japan itself. The futility of his attempts at piecing together an accurate understanding of Japan through these art forms is as much unspeakably funny as it is painful to read what Carey does next, digging himself into a hole that he buries himself in with the shovel of his own ignorance, prospecting for meaning but finding only bitter disappointment.

The premise of the travel book is that Peter Carey takes his son along to Japan because Charley wants to find out more about Manga and Anime. Simple enough a premise, but not a good foundation for a book about "understanding Japanese culture". The resulting, light reading tome is fun and is a page turner, but you will cringe as Carey refuses to admit defeat and his constant assumption that there is something about Japan that he believes, paranoid to the end, that the natives will not tell gaijins.

The answer to Carey's dilemma is that he approached the way he asked his questions the wrong way. Even if you don't live in Japan, assuming you know the answer all the time when you ask a question will not help you win friends. Carey gets what he deserves in this book, and he was lucky enough to escape the country without being thrown out by force. ( )

Wrong About Japan is a sort of docu-book about this dude, Peter Carey, and his son, Charlie (or something).

The father is from Australia, and now they all live in New York. Charlie becomes interested in anime and manga. That's it, just ANIME and MANGA. (He also rents Kikujiro a few billion times, but it's a kick ass movie, so you can't blame him) So what does the father do? Like any good, white father he tries to see what his son is inerested in. (if you noticed that white there, i'm too chicken to take it out) So because the guy is an Australian, maybe, he's like, "Wanna go to Japan?" (THAT QUICK?!) and the kid is like "Yeah, whatever".

Rich people. Anyway.

They go to Japan, and even though he's been there before, the dad totally ruins the trip for his kid. The kid, ironically, begs his dad not to see "Real Japan", that is, Kabuki shows and torii shrines and probably well-endowed tanuki sculptures but that last one isn't mentioned. Charlie would rather go to play video games and make Gundam models and stuff. But noooooo. After telling the reader that Japan is a closed society and that gaijin will never understand, he is determined to be the "gaijin who got it." worst of all, he wants to "get it" through anime and manga.

So he gets to go to all these interviews with famous anime and manga artists. He also goes to see a swordsmith and a cross-dressing "visualist otaku". They all insist to him that manga was just developed trying to sell candy, and anime is to sell toys, or from manga. And he's still like, "but to the Japanese, aren't there parts of the anime, to which other societies are oblivious?"
"um... no. Just to sell robot toy."
"but why the obsession with robots? When the kids are in the robot, is it like they're in a robot 'womb' so they feel safe from all the 'other' kids" (in other words, do the nihonjin want a big robot mommy so they can be protected from the ignorant, evil, gaijin?
"Um... it's a toy."

So by the time they get to Kazu or Kayu or whatever the hell his name was, I'm convinced that there is actually an "it" that the nihonjin are conditioned to keep secret from all gaijin. Perhaps it is a small stillborn child floating in some sort of bluish green liquid that was frozen in the snowy snowiness of Hokkaido. Maybe not. But Carey is certain that something like this exists, so he has to go around doing interviews and keeping his poor kid from his penpal Takashi. He is annoying. Annoying to the intervewees, annoying to Charley, annoying to his connections, annoying to Takashi, and annoying to ME.

But then, Carey does something so wonderful and completely unexpected. He is really funny. REALLY funny. There were some moments that made me chuckle before but wow. When they are trying to visit Takashi (with whom I am in love) one last time, they go to the Mister Donut where he works. But the store is closed, and you read this:

But Mister Donut was closed. Impossible. We both got out of the car and stood with our noses pressed against the glass doors. It had been open before, so how could it be closed now? I took the parcel from my son and laid it on the step.
Charley retrieved his gift and then, from deep in a pocket of his baggy jeans, pulled out the map Takashi had drawn when he invited us to his grandmother's apartment.
"Oh no," I thought, "no, please, no."
But what was I to do? My only choice was to hand the driver our map. "We go," I said in perfect English.

This is very funny--I don't care what you think. It's my review.

In conclusion!!! This was a very good book writing-wise. But I'll tell you, this Carey guy got on my LAST NERVE. You were Wrong About Japan. You lose. But the last part was great, and not because it was the last part. But because it was funny... very cinematic. Good Job.

Stay tuned for my next review: Howl's Moving Castle by Dianna Wynne Jones. Let's see how interesting the people are when they aren't dubbed from the nihongo. ( )

Peter Carey was introduced to Japanese manga comics and animé films by his 12 year old son Charley. Intrigued to know more, he organises a trip for both of them to Tokyo to meet some of the major figures in the movement, their ultimate goal being an audience with "Spirited Away" creator Hayao Mizaki.

This book relates the story of the trip. Charley is already in full on moody teenager mode. His dad has more interest in relating manga/animé to more ancient Japanese forms such as kabuki theatre and the reverence for swords, so they visit one of Tokyo's two working swordmakers and sit through several hours of kabuki.

Charley perhaps unsurprisingly finds both incredibly boring, preferring instead to make contact with a guy he's met over the internet called Takashi. As a result, the book is as much about their father/son relationship as it is about Japan.

As to what Carey discovers he's actually wrong about, his interviews find him reading things into the comics that aren't there and alternately he is told by his unfaiIingly polite hosts that there are things in there he will never understand because he is not Japanese. He also writes humourously about some of their misunderstandings as they make their way around the city, such as choosing to have dinner in a restaurant that turns out to be a front for a yakuza run brothel.

Overall, the book is pretty lightweight - I read it in a couple of days - and makes no stunning revelations about Japanese culture apart from, perhaps, the motivations behind the manga itself. For example, "Gundam Mobile Suits", one of the Careys' favourite series, turns out, in true capitalistic style, to have been created to sell associated merchandise, rather than make profound observations about Japan as Carey has mistakenly assumed.

Carey's narration is affable and unpretentious, less showy than in those of his novels I've read. It also comes with some rather splendid illustrations, sadly all in black and white apart from the shockingly pink cover. ( )