TOKYO VICE: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan, by Jake Adelstein. Pantheon, 2009, 352 pp., $26 (hardcover)
While a senior at Tokyo's Sophia University, 23-year-old Missouri native Jake Adelstein was heading home from a Shinjuku cinema when, on a whim, he dropped into a game arcade and popped ¥100 into the slot of a fortunetelling robot for some mystical career advice.
"The job you are best suited for is . . . something involving writing," read the Tarot card chosen by "Madame Tantra." "If you always keep your antenna out probing for information and nurture your morbid curiosity in a good way, fate will be on your side."