Scan barcode
tdwightdavis's review against another edition
1.0
I hated this book from the start when the smartass white man tells a Japanese man who he claims to be friends with that his homeland’s food sucks shit and he tries to play it like he’s just an endearing scoundrel but really he’s a shitty friend and a shitty person. Throughout the book my opinion didn’t change. He calls sumo wrestlers fatties who wear diapers. He has a white imperialist’s journey to enlightenment through Japanese food while long-suffering Japanese folks do their best to get him to stop being an asshole and see that other cultures can also have valuable contributions to the world. He repeats tired, racist tropes about Japan, including that MSG has been disliked in America because of an Asian doctor’s article in a medical journal (the article, as is common knowledge at this point and confirmed by one google search that takes under 3 minutes, was written by 2 white men using a fake, offensive “Asian” name. They even made up a university for him to teach at that doesn’t exist, but this is never mentioned in this book despite the author, supposedly, being a journalist). I stopped reading around page 200 when he puts on some slippers that are too small for him and says they make him “totter like a low-rent tranny.” Genuinely cannot believe a publisher allowed this to go to print.
laneyofthenight's review against another edition
3.0
I finally finished! God, that felt like forever. It actually wasn’t that long a book, but it was very slow going, for reasons I’m happy to explain and certainly will because I’ve developed a lot of strong opinions about this one.
To begin, the actual content is fascinating. I don’t think there was ever any doubt that months traveling around Japan experiencing the culture and eating till your hearts content could possibly be boring, and it wasn’t. That said, interesting subject matter doesn’t solve every problem, and as others have said, this book was definitely lacking balance. I felt like I was jumping between huge chunks of memoir about a family vacation and huge chunks overloaded with information about Japanese cuisine.
That said, the writing itself may have been my bigger problem, and it sometimes left me with a bad taste in my mouth. For example, I found that location and timing were very hit or miss. There were times in this book when I got ridiculously detailed descriptions of where they were, when they were there, and how they got there, and other times all I got was a snippet two pages into the chapter of something like “just outside in Hiroshima”. It made it unnecessarily more difficult to keep track of the progress of his journey, especially on occasions when he would jump back in his story and give further explanation of something he’d done previously that always left me wondering if he knew what order he did things in, because I had to take notes to piece it together. That compounded with my biggest problem.
My biggest problem with his writing, and with the entire book, is the sheer number of times that the author would begin explaining something interesting and complex and mid-explanation would cut off with a “but we’ll come back to this later”. It made things incredibly difficult to follow, and I think I’m going to retain substantially less information from this book than I normally would be able to simply because of the poor outline of information flow. His writing would’ve been substantially more compelling if organized in a more coherent way.
Overall, the book had some flaws, substantial flaws in my opinion, but the content was interesting enough to make up for most of this, and it’s a good starting point to learn more about Japanese regional cuisine.
To begin, the actual content is fascinating. I don’t think there was ever any doubt that months traveling around Japan experiencing the culture and eating till your hearts content could possibly be boring, and it wasn’t. That said, interesting subject matter doesn’t solve every problem, and as others have said, this book was definitely lacking balance. I felt like I was jumping between huge chunks of memoir about a family vacation and huge chunks overloaded with information about Japanese cuisine.
That said, the writing itself may have been my bigger problem, and it sometimes left me with a bad taste in my mouth. For example, I found that location and timing were very hit or miss. There were times in this book when I got ridiculously detailed descriptions of where they were, when they were there, and how they got there, and other times all I got was a snippet two pages into the chapter of something like “just outside in Hiroshima”. It made it unnecessarily more difficult to keep track of the progress of his journey, especially on occasions when he would jump back in his story and give further explanation of something he’d done previously that always left me wondering if he knew what order he did things in, because I had to take notes to piece it together. That compounded with my biggest problem.
My biggest problem with his writing, and with the entire book, is the sheer number of times that the author would begin explaining something interesting and complex and mid-explanation would cut off with a “but we’ll come back to this later”. It made things incredibly difficult to follow, and I think I’m going to retain substantially less information from this book than I normally would be able to simply because of the poor outline of information flow. His writing would’ve been substantially more compelling if organized in a more coherent way.
Overall, the book had some flaws, substantial flaws in my opinion, but the content was interesting enough to make up for most of this, and it’s a good starting point to learn more about Japanese regional cuisine.
bookboss85's review against another edition
5.0
The original copy of this post can be found at: http://www.nerdprobs.com/books/book-review-super-sushi-ramen-express-by-michael-booth/
**A copy of this book was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.**
This book made me hungry with every turn of the page. I could see every steaming bowl of ramen. I could taste the sake and smell the fermenting soy sauce. I have read a fair share of travelogues and food books. This one ranks right up there in the top 5. What makes it more relatable to a large percent of the population is that he takes his wife and two kids with him on the adventure. While some people would jet off to write a book and travel, he takes his family with him.
The story begins as he is at school at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, France. While there, he befriends a man, Toshi, from Japan. Toshi is appalled by the way the French teach people to cook fish. Michael is unsure until Toshi gives him a book about Japanese cooking. Just reading that book plants the seeds of interest in his mind. With that, he begins to plan a trip to Japan to find out for himself everything he read in the book. What he originally planned as a trip with just him turned into a family trip that he wouldn’t change for the world. They packed the family up for a several month long trek through Japan to discover its culinary secrets. Spending several weeks in Toyko, Kyoto, and Okinawa just to name a few. While in Japan he went to a sake tasting event where he got slightly tipsy. He took his family to a Sumo Wrestler meal. They managed to get a meeting with the people that actually makes MSG. They went to a place where they were eating fugu during what he was excited to find was the annual Fugu Festival. While there he learned they are starting to breed non-poisonous fugu. However, most are still toxic and I have read that around six or seven people die from eating wrongly prepared fugu in Japan each year. Did you know that the average Japanese consumes 2 gallons of soy sauce a year?!? No neither did I.
This book is fantastic. The food sounds amazing. What I like about this book the most is that almost all of it is affordable to the everyday person. The only super expensive meal he ate, was a “by invite only” meal. He only happened to get it by doing an interview at the Chef School in Toyko. The man who ran the school invited him to dine with him. The stories are entertaining and engaging. He keeps the pages turning with his stories. He goes in depth with things without being too dry and boring. I will be reading more books by this author. I have already added his books to my “to read” list.
**A copy of this book was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.**
This book made me hungry with every turn of the page. I could see every steaming bowl of ramen. I could taste the sake and smell the fermenting soy sauce. I have read a fair share of travelogues and food books. This one ranks right up there in the top 5. What makes it more relatable to a large percent of the population is that he takes his wife and two kids with him on the adventure. While some people would jet off to write a book and travel, he takes his family with him.
The story begins as he is at school at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, France. While there, he befriends a man, Toshi, from Japan. Toshi is appalled by the way the French teach people to cook fish. Michael is unsure until Toshi gives him a book about Japanese cooking. Just reading that book plants the seeds of interest in his mind. With that, he begins to plan a trip to Japan to find out for himself everything he read in the book. What he originally planned as a trip with just him turned into a family trip that he wouldn’t change for the world. They packed the family up for a several month long trek through Japan to discover its culinary secrets. Spending several weeks in Toyko, Kyoto, and Okinawa just to name a few. While in Japan he went to a sake tasting event where he got slightly tipsy. He took his family to a Sumo Wrestler meal. They managed to get a meeting with the people that actually makes MSG. They went to a place where they were eating fugu during what he was excited to find was the annual Fugu Festival. While there he learned they are starting to breed non-poisonous fugu. However, most are still toxic and I have read that around six or seven people die from eating wrongly prepared fugu in Japan each year. Did you know that the average Japanese consumes 2 gallons of soy sauce a year?!? No neither did I.
This book is fantastic. The food sounds amazing. What I like about this book the most is that almost all of it is affordable to the everyday person. The only super expensive meal he ate, was a “by invite only” meal. He only happened to get it by doing an interview at the Chef School in Toyko. The man who ran the school invited him to dine with him. The stories are entertaining and engaging. He keeps the pages turning with his stories. He goes in depth with things without being too dry and boring. I will be reading more books by this author. I have already added his books to my “to read” list.
lindzee's review against another edition
1.0
The author was very much in love with himself in this one. He described his experience and seemed to include his children only as a device to get funding for the whole book. Also, he liked to described food in the most meaningless way: deliciously slimy - what does that even mean?
alecrigdon's review against another edition
2.0
OKAY. So this is very hard for me to review. The travel and food aspect of this book was fun to read. The author paints great images of the dishes he experienced throughout Japan and the landscapes seen. I learned a lot about what I assume is accurate opinions/knowledge on Japanese cuisine, despite sometimes sounding merely regurgitated from other sources.
Every so often, however, the narration would include some incredibly ignorant and obsolete tidbit. In one instance the phrase "low rent tranny" is used to describe how he had to totter about in a pair of undersized house slippers. Why on earth was this relevant or needed, especially for a book written in the 21st century?
Other sections left me with an unsettling feeling of misogyny in regards to the treatment of his wife or other women along the road. I understand that gender politics in a foreign country may be vastly different, but to highlight the contrast, then turn around and reduce his life partner to being obsessed with shopping or simply writing her out of 95% of all the unique experiences because she is the only one capable of watching the children is lame.
I'm not sure what made me think this book would be much different than your typical "white person traveling a foreign land" narrative. While the author does try to infuse quite a bit of research throughout, I finished with a bitter taste of inauthenticity. Hopefully this writer continues to grow his world view as much as he claims on his travels in Japan and he can catch up with the rest of us.
Every so often, however, the narration would include some incredibly ignorant and obsolete tidbit. In one instance the phrase "low rent tranny" is used to describe how he had to totter about in a pair of undersized house slippers. Why on earth was this relevant or needed, especially for a book written in the 21st century?
Other sections left me with an unsettling feeling of misogyny in regards to the treatment of his wife or other women along the road. I understand that gender politics in a foreign country may be vastly different, but to highlight the contrast, then turn around and reduce his life partner to being obsessed with shopping or simply writing her out of 95% of all the unique experiences because she is the only one capable of watching the children is lame.
I'm not sure what made me think this book would be much different than your typical "white person traveling a foreign land" narrative. While the author does try to infuse quite a bit of research throughout, I finished with a bitter taste of inauthenticity. Hopefully this writer continues to grow his world view as much as he claims on his travels in Japan and he can catch up with the rest of us.
crispinsday's review against another edition
4.0
A foodie travelogue by a British food writer. I learned a huge amount about Japanese food from this book and the author has impressive descriptive skills when it comes to food, flavour and place, but although it can be laugh out loud funny when the author is being self-deprecating, it's marred by some moments of very cringey, blokey humour that would almost certainly get edited out in 2021.
starduest's review against another edition
4.0
This was a wondrously nostalgic trip to Japan. It evoked sights and sounds that had long since blurred in my memory that at one point I thought of buying the book just so I can flip through it and read a chapter whenever I miss Japan and need a memory jog. The final third flagged a little and the chapters were quite touch and go. The blurb also mis-sells the book, which was hardly about the trials of travelling and navigating Japan's food scene with children but about one man's exploration and discovery of the myriad aspects of Japanese food with some humorous anecdotes involving his family. I'm not sure how well the book will go down for those with no prior visual or taste reference of Japanese food but it's guaranteed to be a treat for anyone who loves and misses the country and its cuisine.