{"id":31325,"date":"2013-08-03T13:02:32","date_gmt":"2013-08-03T17:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=31325"},"modified":"2013-08-03T13:02:32","modified_gmt":"2013-08-03T17:02:32","slug":"jq-magazine-book-review-amorous-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2013\/08\/03\/jq-magazine-book-review-amorous-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"JQ Magazine: Book Review \u2013 \u2018Amorous Woman\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\""Amorous<\/a>

“Amorous Woman<\/em> is well written\u2014especially the vibrant, vivid sexual acts\u2014and you get the feeling that this would make a great film (If nothing else, there would be some hilarious scenes).” (Iro Books)<\/p><\/div>\n

By\u00a0<\/i><\/strong>Rashaad Jorden<\/i><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(<\/i><\/strong>Yamagata-ken<\/i><\/strong><\/a>, 2008-2010) for\u00a0<\/i><\/strong>JQ\u00a0<\/strong>magazine<\/b><\/em><\/a>. Rashaad worked at four elementary schools and three junior high schools on JET, and taught a weekly conversion class in Haguro (his village) to adults. He completed the Tokyo Marathon in 2010, and was also a member of a taiko group in Haguro.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

If you were to tell stories centering on the most memorable aspects of your stay in Japan, what would you focus on?<\/p>\n

Donna George Storey<\/a> tackled the erotic. Her autobiographic eBook, Amorous Woman<\/a>, <\/i>brings out a side of Japan\u00a0that many might not see. Inspired by Ihara Saikaku’s novel, The Life of an Amorous Woman<\/i>, Storey brings to life the kinkiest aspects of her\u00a0nine years\u00a0in Japan, where she worked as an English teacher and a bar hostess, in addition to enjoying the company (to say the least) of countless Japanese men.<\/p>\n

Amorous Woman\u00a0<\/i>actually doesn’t\u00a0start in Japan but in\u00a0San Francisco, where the novel’s protagonist\u00a0Lydia\u00a0is teaching Japanese business\u00a0etiquette (despite the fact she knows little of it)\u00a0to businessmen en route to the Land of the Rising Sun. But\u00a0she’s actually\u00a0planning to\u00a0do a 180 from her life in Japan\u2014Lydia has decided to\u00a0model her life on a Japanese courtesan-turned-nun, a character that only lives in the fantasies of Ihara Saikaku. She even tells herself upon leaving Japan that she will never have sex again.<\/p>\n

If only if it weren’t that easy to get the subject off her mind. Since she knows “plenty about picking up strangers in hot spring baths, handcuffing guys to beds in tacky love hotels,” among other things, she decides to tell the real story of her stay in Japan to two students over dinner. That’s when Amorous Woman<\/i> really heats up.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But the\u00a0novel’s kinkiness starts\u00a0well before\u00a0Lydia ever steps foot in Japan. She describes her mother and a woman named Mrs. Muller (who, like her mother, was a widow)\u00a0as being her first teachers in sensual pleasure, but\u00a0it was\u00a0her cousin Caroline and Caroline’s friend Marybeth who got Lydia to lose her innocence. Marybeth practices giving Lydia a blowjob, and Caroline sets up the big cherry popping for her cousin. And she was ready: Lydia’s first sexual partner Mike thought she did a good job, to say the least.<\/p>\n

Lydia’s libido only picks up in Nihon, where she was “hungry for new flavors of every kind,” including foreigners. (Despite saying she didn’t come to Japan to shag white guys, she gives awesome head to a fellow American named Jason whom she meets on a bus).\u00a0During the early portion of her Japanese stay, most of her bed partners were college students (the only Japanese men with time for her), but she moves on to salarymen, even marrying one named Yuji Yoshikawa.<\/p>\n

But if you thought marriage was going to tie down Lydia, you’re sorely mistaken. In\u00a0part because she was\u00a0unhappily married, Lydia continues to enjoy numerous flings with both men and women. And through a new position at a hostess club, she meets more men she can open her legs to. (How else do you think she celebrated her last night in Japan?)<\/p>\n

In between all the sex, though, there are numerous hilarious moments in\u00a0Amorous Woman<\/i>, like when Lydia teaches\u00a0one\u00a0of her\u00a0lovers the meanings of\u00a0first\/second\/third base, etc. And that wasn’t the only time Lydia introduced some new vocabulary to adults: at\u00a0a bounenkai<\/i>, she mimics sex acts on stage while teaching those in attendance some not-so-G-rated synonyms for one\u2019s private parts.<\/p>\n

Even if your life in Japan wasn’t as raunchy as Lydia’s, you’ll appreciate the cultural references she includes\u00a0in the novel, such as an omiai<\/i>, the occasion\u00a0where she met her husband, and shibari <\/i>(Japanese bonding). She also takes readers into the world of Japanese weddings and work parties, and hilariously explains some differences between Japan and the U.S.<\/p>\n

I would have liked to have\u00a0read more about\u00a0what attracted her to the\u00a0men she met in Japan. Of course, the answer to that question might be obvious. But she enjoyed several\u00a0dalliances with businessmen, who are not considered sexy in the eyes of many. Also, there was no mention of what brought\u00a0her to Japan in the first half of the book.<\/p>\n

The latter quibble is mild. Amorous Woman <\/i>is well written\u2014especially the\u00a0vibrant, vivid\u00a0sexual acts\u2014and\u00a0you get the feeling that this would make a great film (If nothing else, there would be some hilarious scenes). Although this book is geared toward adults who have spent time in Japan, those who only know\u00a0of\u00a0Japan the stoic stereotype of the\u00a0salaryman will\u00a0be nicely\u00a0introduced to its freakiness and kinkiness.<\/p>\n

For more\u00a0<\/i><\/strong>JQ\u00a0magazine book reviews,\u00a0<\/i><\/strong>click here<\/i><\/strong><\/a>.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Rashaad Jorden\u00a0(Yamagata-ken, 2008-2010) for\u00a0JQ\u00a0magazine. Rashaad worked at four elementary schools and three junior high schools on JET, and taught a weekly conversion class in Haguro (his village) to adults. He completed the Tokyo Marathon in 2010, and was also a member of a taiko group in Haguro. If you were to tell stories centering on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[40,291,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-jq-magazine","category-reviews"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-89f","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31325"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31329,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31325\/revisions\/31329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}