Angry White Pyjamas - Softcover

Twigger, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0753808587 ISBN 13: 9780753808580

Publisher: W&N, 2007

Synopsis

A brilliant and captivating insight into the bizarre nature of contemporary Japan.

Adrift in Tokyo, teaching giggling Japanese highschool girls how to pronounce Tennyson correctly, Robert Twigger came to a revelation about himself: he'd never been fit. In a bid to escape the cockroach infestation and sweaty squalor of a cramped apartment in Fuji Heights, Twigger sets out to cleanse his body and his mind. Not knowing his fist from his elbow the author is sucked into the world of Japanese martial arts, and the brutally demanding course of budo training taken by the Tokyo Riot Police, where any ascetic motivation soon comes up against blood-stained dogis and fractured collarbones.

In Angry White Pyjamas Robert Twigger skilfully blends the ancient with the modern - the ultra-traditionalism, ritual and violence of the dojo (training academy) with the shopping malls, nightclubs and scenes of everyday Tokyo life in the twenty-first century - to provide an entertaining and captivating glimpse of contemporary Japan.

About this title

Review:

Only at one point did I suddenly think: What the hell are you doing here? Why don't you just walk away? I banished the thought quickly. I knew I couldn't afford the luxury of such thinking if I was going to stick it out for the whole year.

When Robert Twigger found himself training alongside the Tokyo Riot Police, he realised two things: He'd never been fit and he'd never been tough. In fact, as a student and poet in the relatively cosseted world of Oxford, he had done nothing to uphold the family's military reputation established by his grandfather.

But once he joined Japan's most famous Aikido "dojo", (academy) he came up against all the challenges a life of tough physical action had to throw at him: Sadistic teachers, even more sadistic friends, repetitive training, broken limbs and the ominous "nobbies".

At more than one point throughout the year-long course that would change him from pondering intellectual to "bodyguard" for two elderly Japanese women, Twigger thought of quitting. So what kept him going--his friends in Fuji heights, Chris and Fat Frank? Sara, his Japanese girlfriend? A Zen belief in overcoming the will of the self? It was more to do with sheer grit and determination-- a refusal to be beaten.

Though winner of the William Hill 1998 Sports Book of the Year, this is no ordinary sports book. Intelligent, witty, and downright compelling, the story of a self-confessed "softie" who took on some of the world's toughest and made it through, is one of the best books you will read this year. Peppered with insight into the exclusive Japanese culture and ex-pat life, Twigger's book will make you want to get off your couch and travel to the land of the rising sun straight away-- or at least, once you've finished the book. --Lucie Naylor

Review:

A frantic, very funny, urban quest. (Simon Garfield Mail on Sunday)

A book of unexpected brilliance. It is subtle, funny, stimulating and original - a rites-of-passage story, an explanation of an alien culture, and an inspiring work of philosophy (Patrick French)

His fine eye for eccentricities makes this an entertaining travelogue (The Observer)

A rattling good yarn and very funny into the bargain (Tim Hulse Independent on Sunday)

This is a splendidly written adventure, something sane at last on the craziness of martial arts (Independent on Sunday)

His explanation of how to come to terms with intense pain should be read to every footballer who has ever writhed about in agony after a kick on the shin... It is a clever, enthralling book (Ian Wooldridge Daily Mail)

Brilliant ... everyone should read it (Tony Parsons Late Review)

Wonderfully oddball ... Here is a cult book all right, which could do for Japan and the martial arts what Hornby did for Highbury and the football terraces (Frank Keating Guardian)

Poetry in motion (Sue Townsend Sunday Times)

Communicates the existential purity of his elective regime with irrepressible passion ... it also has the unmistakable stamp of authentic experience (Daily Telegraph)

About this edition

• Publisher: W&N
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0753808587
• ISBN 13: 9780753808580
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320