Note, by the way, that I did not include Experience or Explore, obvious contenders for the fourth (and possibly fifth) E. Don’t people travel just to see the world? To swim where there are no lifeguards, to climb where there is no oxygen, to buy trinkets in foreign bazaars where they don’t take American Express? I skipped these because I feel fairly certain that while these are the What of travel memoirs, they don’t quite reach the Why, or the So What. Show me a travel book that doesn’t involve some type of revelation, metamorphosis, or eternal need to run, and I will show you Fodor’s guide to Wherever.

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Lisa Fineberg Cook is a nice Jewish girl who has traveled. (And how!, as my grandma would say.) Though originally from Montreal, Los Angeles has been home for most of her life, which means that, like most urban / coastal, middle class, liberal Jews, Cook grew up with her needs met fairly quickly, and rarely feeling like an outsider. Hence she refers to herself as a J.A.P. in her very enjoyable ride of a memoir, Japan Took the J.A.P. Out of Me .

I suppose the term requires some redefinition for me, since I always associated the stereotype with a kind of vapid, selfish, material-centric existence which I can’t, somehow, connect to the very personable and earthy author, who I spoke to on the phone last week. I knew I was talking to the real deal – a natural high-end-Gen-X-chic-lit writer, talented and clever and insightful and empathic. Someone I definitely would want to hang out with, and think I could learn a lot from in the ‘follow your dreams’ category. But I couldn’t quite get myself to feel the J.A.P.

Maybe my definition is wrong. Or maybe because I didn’t know Cook “Before,” a decade ago, when her new husband, Peter, an educator’s educator, took a two-year job teaching English in Japan. Not in Gotham-esque, international Tokyo, mind you, but in a place – and no, she didn’t make this up – called Nagoya. (It’s where you’d probably live if your employer was the currently beleaguered Toyota.) It would be, in tribal terms, like making Aliyah to developing Dimona or Afula instead of to bustling, global Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, where you can easily manage almost everything in English.

Cook was literally thrown into cold foreign waters, where she, a tallish, manicured blonde with no knowledge of Japanese, was about as inconspicuous as George Clooney would be at a nail salon in Teaneck. And yes, the locals noticed, but there was no Bree Van de Kamp basket of muffins forthcoming.

It turns out, however, that Cook, a pro swimmer who owns and operates a swim school in LA (in addition to her steadily rising writing career), managed not only to stay afloat on the other side of the Pacific, but to do so with great style. Her approach to laundering, cooking, and bus-riding her way through Japan is much more Bryson than it is Gilbert. Rather than a pensive, searching tone, Cook opts for light and witty, like providing readers with her translation of the Japanese “Aaahhhmaaaaybeee,” which can mean “yes, no, not on your life, fuck off, or just plain maybe.”

The author notes that she was hesitant to write from a place of real depth in commenting on another society, since she’d never assume that what she had to say about another culture was that important. And so, instead of exploring Japanese mores or her own enlightenment, Lisa plays it direct and writes about the day to day of getting by. True humor, of course, especially the kind where you laugh at yourself in various contexts, is not only universal, but also doesn’t have a great shot at being politically correct.

“It was a risk to play it that way as writer,” she says, “either people love it, can relate, think it was funny, had a similar experience OR they are offended – Americans abroad can’t be at all judgmental, they’re supposed to write how they fell in love with the place. I chose to write about my first year [Cook was there for two years], as a real outsider.” How refreshing.

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I, for one, am in the first category. Moving to Israel a week after my wedding in the days before the North American Aliyah Renaissance, I was the loneliest newlywed that there ever was, and there were days that I, like Lisa, could do nothing while my new husband was out all day in law school but seek out American food. And eat it. (And how!) Let’s just say that I knew I was adjusted to life here when I lost those 40 imported pounds.

The other challenges of early marriage – including, notably, what to do with your close female friendships once there’s a man in the mix – are dealt with in Cook’s memoir very astutely. I am not fooled by Lisa’s funny streak. The lady is profound.

Because despite her casual, comical attitude, there was expansion. Most of this enlightenment takes shape as a new appreciation and empathy for immigrants in the US, but also of the larger issue put forth in the book’s title: losing that sense of cultural entitlement that the world loves so much about Americans. (Cue the irony font.) It is indeed possible that there is another way to do things – or several – and that the Western world might need to look at its protocols and cultural quirks as a path, but not the path, to living one’s best life.

I’ve said before that I find it fascinating how journey books tend to take people from a narrower to a wider place – Cook went from slightly spoiled Cosmo-sipping American single to thoughtful married woman of the world. But rarely (actually, never, in my experience) do they go the other way. Have we ever read about someone worldly and experienced who decides to settle down into a religious life? Isn’t that, potentially, also enlightenment? This, too, is very American. To celebrate the broadest possible outlook while maintaining the narrow definition of broadening.

Now, I love America as much as the next ex-pat, but as one who has lived overseas for nearly 17 years (yikes!!!), I can say that every American should have to live somewhere else for at least a year, if for no other reason than to learn another language besides English. Incidentally, Cook says that she is thrilled that her 8-year-old (the Cooks also have a new baby) is learning Hebrew in school.

What’s next for Lisa? A sequel, chronicling her and Peter’s stint teaching at a skiers’ boarding school in Maine. Working Title? Lumber J.A.P. (lol.) Also, hopefully, more teaching travels, this time with two kids. (…and I wish her much luck with that.)

Lisa, I hope you get over this way on one of your world tours. I’ll take you out in Tel Aviv for a beer. Or, its JAPpy cousin, the Breezer.

1. (…Dammit, I missed the Thanksgiving post. What a bum. Time is not my friend….) Which brings me to this:
2. Do I want to grow old if I will not be sound of mind / functioning with dignity? After some difficult family stuff this month (and occasional mundane confrontations with my own apparent mortality…may not be a vampire after all…damn…), I’m not sure how I feel about letting only God say when I go, even though I hope I have at least half a century before I really have to think about this. (But by then, I may not be able to think…) How wrong is it to write: “If I revert to toddlerhood, please take me back even further” in your will? I know it’s not the religious thing to do. I’m just wondering about what the options are. (Way in advance, as usual.) Which brings me to two very old people who are the very opposite of helpless….
3. Shameless plug #1: Stay tuned to this space for my post on a conversation between this man and my grandma, two nonagenarians with a lot on their minds. When I read Estes’s letter to Obama, (forwarded in an email chain to me and a million other people), it struck me as something my grandmother would have written, and I got an idea… After a few minutes of Google snooping and an e-mail, I found the guys to whom Estes dictated the letter (he’s too old to write with his own hand) and asked them to set up a call with my grandmother. These are two WWII heroes (from the opposite ends of that dreadful war) who are devastated by an America they feel has let them down. I thought they should “meet” to commiserate…and they did…Which brings me to this:
4. This Time Magazine article about the Decade from Hell really got me in the mood for New Years, and toasting to better beginnings. I think back to where I was when we rang in the new millennium – where we all were – and I can’t believe it’s only been ten years. The world looks insanely different. Which brings me to Web 2.0.
5. Seriously, to rephrase the old Twitter question: What are we doing? Some days I am on the computer for 8 long hours, working…I think. Writing, consulting on the right turn of phrase, Facebooking for fun and profit, *networking*, developing new leads, blablablah. …And finally quit way after dark, wondering what exactly I did all day and why. (Sometimes I get paid.) Are we just busy fools in our cyberofficespace? Or are we going somewhere with this? Sometimes I really want to be a farmer planting 140 stalks of corn instead. Which brings me to Dorothy Gale.
6. I just finished reading a great and entertaining memoir by Lisa Fineberg Cook, a self-aware, spoiled, very smart and funny Jewish girl from LA who marries a world-traveling educator / adventurer and spends two years in Japan, completely out of her element. The better to introspect, my dear. The new bride ends up shedding many of her J.A.P.py notions, and learning a thing or two about how being a citizen of the world (and a wife) requires one to step into another’s shoes, regularly. (And that borrowing your best friend’s Manolos doesn’t count in this regard.) I will be writing an entire column on the book, and doing a Q+A with the author, sometime in the next month (Shameless plug #2), but what I want to say now is this: I once had the privilege to edit an excellent partial manuscript for someone whose journey took him in somewhat of the opposite direction…From a Zen, secular life in the US, to a bike tour through Europe and to Lebanon, to meet his wife’s Christian Arab family, and, ultimately, to Israel, where he ended up adopting religious Judaism. (As did she.) The writing was superb and the adventure completely unique, but he could not find a publisher anywhere. I ask anyone who will answer me: Will the Manhattan book establishment not even entertain the possibility that growth can also take one from the assimilated to the culturally particular? Is it a given that to be a “journey” it not only has to end in self-awareness and spiritual expansion, but in adopting something foreign? What if there’s no place like home? Would Dorothy Gale get published in 2009, having seen the other side of the rainbow, and choosing churchy Kansas because that’s where her heart was? Which brings me to Hanukah:
7. Would I have been a Maccabee or a Hellenist? I ask this quite sincerely since I’m pretty sure Mattathias Cohen and Sons were more Judean Hilltop and less Tel Aviv Café…not even suburban Modern Orthodox. While we live (and my kids learn) in an Orthodox environment, Jewish-centered and centric, I can not claim to have taken secular culture out of our house – pretty much the opposite is true. Is it only living in Israel that allows us the luxury of consuming Hollywood and being broadly cultural, and not worrying for a minute about our identity or continuity? I’m thinking probably…yes… in the US I might have been a bit more of a protective / defensive Frumom. (Reason #687 for Aliyah!) I’m also thinking that the Hasmonean Dynasty in the Second Commonwealth didn’t do so well at the end of the day, once they grew cozier with Rome…but that I’m not canceling cable. Which brings me to:
8. Happy Hanukah… (That is the holiday message between programming on my cable channels. Just saying. )