Japanland – A Year in Search of Wa –

“Wa. From her years of Judo practice Karin Muller knew that was the Japanese word for the seemingly effortless state of harmony that was all too lacking her life. The soulless Washington, D.C. apartment, the divorce-lawyer boyfriend who was ‘casually dating at least two other women”, … where was the wa? In Japan, or so she meant to find out.
Karin spends a year in Japan, quickly discovering how maddeningly complicated it is being Japanese. Along the way she learns the cultural biasses and all-too-human quirks of an absorbing cast of characters, from her impossibly exacting host mother (and nemesis) Yukiko to a school of sumo wrestlers to a 63-year-old geisha. One and all are her companions on a trip to the ancient heart of modern Japan.
Broad in scope and intimate in relationships, Japanland is a deftly observed, decidedly unromantic, and hilarious portrait of the land of wa.”