Imagine you are on a road trip around Japan in the company of Victor Meldrew, except Victor has morphed into Gilbert Silvester, a German academic with an interest in beards. Gilbert's withering observations of Japanese culture had me snorting with laughter, but I was also brought up short by the sheer pathos of the story. An ambiguous ending will not be to every reader's taste, though the poetic beauty of the writing more than compensates.
