Pretty Good Number One
2014 • 264 pages
Ratings5
Average rating4.4
15
Ratings5
Average rating4.4
Everyone knows how to live the good life in Paris, Provence, or Tuscany. Now, Matthew Amster-Burton makes you fall in love with Tokyo. Experience this exciting and misunderstood city through the eyes of three Americans vacationing in a tiny Tokyo apartment. Follow 8-year-old Iris on a solo errand to the world's greatest supermarket, picnic on the bullet train, and eat a staggering array of great, inexpensive foods, from eel to udon. A humorous travel memoir in the tradition of Peter Mayle and Bill Bryson, Pretty Good Number One is the next best thing to a ticket to Tokyo. Includes a new afterword by the author featuring Christmas in Tokyo, fried UFOs, a robotic sushi restaurant, and more. "The layers of the city, its extraordinary food pleasures, its quirkinesses, emerge as the author and his family spend an intense month living in Tokyo and exploring widely...Warning: this book will make you hungry. You'll yearn, as I do, to catch the next plane to Tokyo, so you can get eating." —Naomi Duguid, writer and traveler; her most recent book is BURMA: Rivers of Flavor (Artisan 2012) "This is the book I've been hoping Matthew would write: smart, opinionated, and wickedly funny, crammed with in-the-know tips and observations about visiting Tokyo. From the intricacies of garbage sorting to the chirpy jingle for the local supermarket, the pleasures of pan-fried soup dumplings to the pain of junsai, I laughed, cringed, and got so hungry that I had to eat three bowls of cereal to make it to the end. I love this book." —Molly Wizenberg, author of A Homemade Life and creator of Orangette
Reviews with the most likes.
Nick told me this was a great book, so I gave it a try. A few pages in the author is talking about his daughter Iris, food, Seattle, and it hits me - I've read this author before! Awhile ago I read his book “Hungry Monkey” and found it utterly delightful, which boded well for me enjoying this book. Then, a chapter or two into this book, the author mentions his addiction to a manga series called “Oishinbo A la Carte” - I have the first book of the series waiting on my bedside table! All the forces were aligned to bring me to this book, and for me to fall in love with it. Done and done.
Pretty Good Number One accurately (sometimes hilariously!) tells all about the wonders of an American family eating they're way across Japan – Tokyo, Asakusa, Nakano, Kyoto and beyond.
No matter if you have or haven't been to Japan, if you love food and travel, this is a mega-fun read!
From cover-to-cover expect:
Every chapter is as satisfying as the last, and reading this book was like revisiting Japan just a tiny bit.
