Too Late for the Festival

August 29, 2005
In 1985, Paine, then a 37-year-old technical writer, accepted an offer from her former boss at Hewlett-Packard to work for a year at that company's Japan office in Takaido as a foreign service employee. Intended to be a lighthearted memoir of an American in Japan, Paine's story reads more like one long homesick whine. Although she was apparently paid an enormous sum of money to do very little, she detested her job and was annoyed by her Japanese colleagues, who arrived on time, wore business clothes rather than jeans to the office and did not eat at their desks. To add to her pique, a feud (never fully explained) among three of her fellow foreign workers prevented her from socializing with them as she had envisioned. She hated Japanese food, disliked the noise, crowds and traffic in Tokyo and found the language impossible to learn. Paine does express some appreciation for Japan's lack of crime as well as for the many kindnesses the Japanese showed her. It is clear, however, that she was unable to bridge the culture gap; her attempts to point out the humorous differences between Japan and the U.S. fall flat. Anyone contemplating a visit to Japan will learn little from this myopic account.

September 1, 1999
Yet another American goes to an Asian country to work for a year or two and must write about it. In this case, Paine worked as a technical writer for Hewlett-Packard in the Tokyo office from 1985 to 1987. She knew little about the country and nothing about the language, although she gamely took Japanese lessons and tried to speak it. Colleagues took her on trips to Mt. Fuji and other sights, but she refused to eat local food and here makes fun of the locals' attempts at English. Otherwise, she searches for corn flakes and luxuriates in her comfortable quarters, wondering how Japanese can stand their own cramped space. Mostly, she dwells on office politics, complains about her life, and plans her escape back to California. Her descriptions of sights, customs, and religion are of the most elementary nature. Paine is a poignant and engaging writer. She needs a different subject.--Kitty Dean Chen, Nassau Coll., Garden City, NY

Copyright 1999 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 1999
Paine had spent time living abroad in England, but nothing prepared her for the culture shock she would experience during the year and a half she lived in Japan. "Too Late" is her account of living in a culture about which she knew nothing before moving there. In 1985, Paine was recruited by friends to move to Japan to work for Hewlett-Packard Japan. During Paine's time there, she was a technical writer in an office plagued with bad lighting and chain-smokers. She spent much of her free time traveling around the country with Japanese and American coworkers, attempting to see Mount Fuji while also avoiding seafood. She wrote this book as if she were sharing her story with a close friend. She details her frustrations, her loneliness, and her fears with the reader. For anyone interested in travel or living abroad, Paine's memoir is an entertaining look into one American woman's introduction to an Asian culture. ((Reviewed September 15, 1999))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1999, American Library Association.)