Jake Adelstein, like his book, is unconventional, entertaining, intelligent and flawed. A Jewish American who acquired Japanese language skills sufficient to be recruited as the first foreigner ever to work for Japan’s top selling newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun (not to be confused with its English offshoot, the Daily Yomiuri), "Tokyo Vice" is the tale of Adelstein's unique experiences, including his near fatal run-in with one of Japan’s major crime bosses and his admirable exposure of an important scandal.

This true story starts off with a frightening encounter with a member of the Japanese mafia, the Yakuza, who threatens Adelstein’s life. From this dramatic opening we return to Adelstein’s early years on the Yomiuri crime beat, which while interesting for the sheer novelty of its gaijin take on the world of Japanese newspaper reporting and routine police work, lacks the drama of the second half of the book. For it is from around the half-way point that this until then merely adequate book takes off, as Adelstein stumbles across information suggesting that a Yakuza kingpin was granted a US visa by the FBI so that he could buy his way to the top of the liver transplant queue at UCLA hospital. 

Is this book written or structured to the very highest standards? Perhaps not. Would we all have made the same judgements as Adelstein? Unlikely, since most of us are both less obsessive and less brave than he. But this is a fascinating story that disabuses those like me who previously saw the Yakuza as a joke mafia, and also touches on the deeper scandal of the tolerance and even support they receive from parts of the Japanese establishment. An important, informative and at times thrilling book.

Remember those childhood threats that you would leave home and never come back? Of course we all grew out of that, er… except for those of us who left our home countries and never went back (at least not yet). It’s a funny thing to do to pack up and leave your home country to live for a long time, perhaps permanently, somewhere else. But it’s increasingly common. How do people end up spending most of their adult lives as foreigners?

There must surely be a different answer to that question for each individual, but in most cases it will be a mixture of positive “pulls”, negative “pushes” and some element of chance. In my own case I left the UK to teach English in Japan because I was finishing university, had no idea what to do, and it was the midst of the early 90s recession so jobs at home were scarce. With no particular knowledge of or interest in Japan, chance played its part in the form of a mature student friend who had himself taught in Japan and recommended it. After five years back in England I little thought that those two years in Japan were anything other than a youthful sojourn, but again chance played its part and I once more headed east to work for at most another two years on a secondment in Japan. Thirteen years later I have never moved back. 

Others’ stories will differ in the detail, but in my experience most will share elements of this tale. Milligan, the fictional hero of my novel, is “pushed” by the prospect of an enforced betrothal and grabs at the sudden chance of a diplomatic posting at the ends of the earth. Given the current economic difficulties there are no doubt many young people now taking jobs outside their own country, and some proportion of those – unbeknownst even to them – may never go home again except to visit. As John Lennon said, “life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans”.

A crowded island nation at the edge of a continent; a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary government; an imperialist past; a fondness for indirect speech and conversation about the weather; bad teeth. I’m not the first to note the similarities between the UK and Japan. These similarities are real and can have practical consequences, with some Japanese feeling more comfortable with Brits than the brasher American brand of “gaijin”, and many from the UK adapting more easily to the culture shock of Japan than their transatlantic cousins.

But this similarity should not be over-stated. The differences between the UK and Japan still massively outweigh the similarities. Heaven has Japanese food and trains; British parks and comedy. In Hell they eat over-boiled vegetables and are “entertained” (sic) by Japanese “talent” (sic) shows. Even an area of supposed similarity such as the less direct mode of verbal interaction is only a similarity when contrasted with the larger gulf between the American and Japanese manner of speech. Modern Brits are still much more vocal and direct in expressing their opinions than most Japanese. Anyone from the UK will feel much more at home in America or Europe than in Japan.

So there is a large cultural gap between the UK and Japan even in 2012, but it is certainly much smaller than it was in earlier times. The globalised, Americanised culture of the 21st century gives us all a number of shared experiences to discuss as we sip our Starbucks coffee. Imagine, as I have tried to do in my book, how it felt to be a Brit setting foot in Japan 150 years ago. How far from England the traveller must have felt, and how little consolation it must have been that the locals also commented on the rain and had wonky molars.