Angry White Pyjamas

Winner of the 1998 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. If a travel book is meant to give a sense of place, Robert Twigger comes very close to understanding the core of Tokyo life. After drifting through life as an award-winning poet from Oxford University and a struggling dilettante in the Tokyo slums, Twigger finally resorts to the physical and mental discipline of aikido. His description of the physical torture and spiritual transformation undergone through training is always lively and detailed. But Twigger's quirky, succesful portrayal of large, over-muscled expatriates from around the world training and living in Tokyo truly distinguishes his book. Though he does not understand the depth of the Japanese psyche, he is suprisingly insightful about the way of life. By approaching Japanese life through the narrow scope of aikido training, Twigger manages to unearth the extreme contradictions of Tokyo: a city of peace, violence, modernity and tradition. Simultaneously, his humourous and ironic anecdotes about expatriates in Tokyo acknowledge his own awkward status as an outsider not completely accepted but privileged to observe. Tahir Shah, author of Beyond the Devil's Teeth, adds: What's the cure for smoking too much, being a caffeine junkie, never exercising, and hitting the big 3-0? Most people would slouch into their seat at the pub and stare deep into their pint. But Twigger, a self-confessed pacifist in appalling physical shape, decided that a full life-shift was in order. The accomplished poet and winner of Oxford's Newdigate Prize, working in the Land of the Rising Sun, embarked on the hardest martial-arts course in the world. Written with a poet's pen and with a good deal of humour, it touches on the inhuman levels of pain and harsh codes of discipline by which every samurai was bound. (Kirkus UK)