Like many another young, sensitive, well-intentioned foreigner, Canadian-born Peter Oliva -- or his protagonist -- came to Japan for a year and was so bowled over by the place that he felt the world could hardly go on if it didn't hear what happened to him here and how he felt about it.
Most temporary residents restrict their wide-eyed observations and reflections to phone calls and e-mails home or the occasional letter to the newspaper. Some, however, commit them to memoirs -- the genre bulges with foreigners' tales of their experiences in Japan as potters, salarymen, business executives, Zen novices, English teachers, art dealers, "gaijin" spouses and parents, and much else -- and a few cleverly wrap their recycled perceptions in the bright new "furoshiki" of fiction.
We are given a blend of the two in "The City of Yes," a book that reads in part like a series of solemn extracts from a newcomer's journal, but which Oliva insists in an afterword is fiction.