The author's intense scrutiny of journal passages, meant to elucidate and improve, ostensibly, second- or foreign-language teaching methods, and to promote empathy among teachers/students, is repetitive, heavy-handed, and biased. Make no mistake: the author does have several good insights which could have practical applications on teaching/learning methods. They are just too few and rather unoriginal for this reader to rate the book higher.

The key to this book is on pg. 109, far too late: "I was still operating from a place of only partial knowledge. While I had acquired more tools with which to interpret the culture, I was undoubtedly still actively misinterpreting situations, since I was reading things from a different cultural perspective." From this awareness comes a main insight: "I have arrived at a new understanding of the importance of trying to understand a language learner's cultural resistance"(pg. 143). Yet at times these insights apply almost only to the author; she doesn't "cut much slack" for her conversation partners in practice.

For example, early in the book, she categorizes Keio as a "clone" in a blue business suit(pg. 36); she is aware that "her ability... to make pre-determined judgements of people...[obscures her]from seeing things beneath the surface(pg. 35). She even ponders reverse-sexism and prejudice, briefly, on her part (pg. 72). Yet, functioning foremost in a perona of Oppressed Woman, her interpretation of things is one-sided or self-deluding: "The fact that people are not only noticed for wearing red dresses but are'laughed' at signals an alarm that people (women) are supposed to look a certain way so as not to call attention to their self-hood"(pg. 69). The author does not pause to wonder if Keio was thrilled to wear his "clone" outfit, and might not feel similarly oppressed, thwarted from calling attention to his self-hood.

The author also shows bias in an experience with Akemi, a female tutor. The author is irked by Akemi's frequent tardiness to lessons. Akemi writes an apology, leaves a gift. The author writes: "This leads me to wonder if my anger frightened her. Perhaps the directness and tone in which I expressed myself represented male anger--which she described as 'scary.'(pg. 75) The author misses at least 2 important points: perhaps Akemi simply felt badly; and if Akemi was indeed frightened, it was by FEMALE anger. To define anger as "male" is one of pedantic feminism's worst errors and deceits.

The author makes generalizations and unmediated statements that jar when compared to the fastidious scrutiny of mundane personal interactions. For example: "Intimacy may be used as a way for a person in power to allow another to open up or feel comfortable; however, the person being controlled may feel vulnerable, since her personal information can be used against her"(pg. 80). The use of "controlled" in this context is gratuitous and heavy-handed, as is the imagining of a female "victim."

It is hard to know what to make of the author's self-assessment "as a fairly high-functioning speaker"(pg. 44), given the numerous errors of some of the most common Japanese words and phrases. This reduces her credibility (had she never checked a dictionary? had a good proof-reader?), as does her short bibliography, half of which dates from the '70s and '80s. Yet the index is extensive (and unintentionally amusing), with entries for the most obscure details, while in the text, for example, she writes that in Japan "cultural ideology elevates the status of written over spoken forms of language"(pg. 46), with no further discussion or reference to seminal works on the validity (or not) of this statement.