Sterling and Peggy Seagrave continue to amaze your WoWasis review staff. We’re veteran SE Asia travelers, and like many travelers revisiting the region, have more and more questions about the political and cultural factors that drive decisions and events in these countries. In the past couple of years, we’ve been hearing anecdotal stories from associates […]
Read the rest of this entry »Archive for the 'Culture & History' Category
WoWasis book review: Joan Sinclair’s ‘Pink Box: Inside Japan’s Sex Clubs’
What struck us here at WoWasis about Joan Sinclair’s photo-essay book weren’t solely the photographs, but the glossary, referencing 177 terms used in Japan to describe the world of fuzoku, or commercial sex. That’s how we discovered mantaku, female anatomy ink prints, transferred from the lady’s posterior to paper, and sold to the customer as […]
Read the rest of this entry »Bachelor in Bangkok: Khun Lee on the difficulty of moving your Thai girlfriend out of your home
No one wants to be James Bond! I have lived in Bangkok quite some time now, and the biggest shock in my expat life so far is that nearly every guy who moves to Paradise tires very quickly of the single life and moves a lass in to his living quarters and lives the same […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘The Yamato Dynasty’ by Sterling & Peggy Seagrave
Here at WoWasis, we’ve never read a Sterling Seagrave book that we could easily put down. We were glued to our chair, reading The Yamato Dynasty: the Secret History of Japan’s Imperial Family (1999, ISBN 0-7679-0496-6) by Seagrave and his wife Peggy Seagrave, when our back gave out, and we were now really glued to […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Iris Chang’s ‘The Rape of Nanking’
When we at WoWasis attended Iris Chang’s funeral in 2004, it became apparent to us, after the heartfelt tributes of her friends and family, that she was Japan’s final Nanking victim. For a number of years, Chang lived and breathed the Nanking massacre as she was writing her book. After it was published, the ghosts, […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Boye De Mente’s ‘Some Prefer Geisha’
This wonderful book, written by Boye De Mente as a tribute to the geisha was printed in Japan, but occasionally can be found in used bookstores. The full title is Some Prefer Geisha: the Lively Art of Mistress-Keeping in Japan (1966) and it boasts some lively brush and ink illustrations by Tadahito Nadamoto interspersed throughout […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Christopher Seymour’s ‘Yakuza Diary’
One of the joys of visiting used bookstores is finding past gems, like Christopher Seymour’s Yakuza Diary: Doing Time in the Japanese Underworld (1996, 0-87113-604-X). Seymour, in riding around with and interviewing various Yakuza, seems to be, by the end of the book, clearly a fan of the Yakuza subculture. There are loads of great […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Sterling Seagrave’s ‘The Marcos Dynasty’
Travelers to the Philippines will invariably want to find out more about the history of the country after having seen it, but good books (and bookstores!) in the Philippines are hard to find. In particular, books on Philippine history are virtually impossible to be found anywhere. In the picturesque northern Luzon city of Vigan, for […]
Read the rest of this entry »Bachelor in Bangkok: Khun Lee on Bangkok nightlife today vs. 1995
I’d like to take the time to compare Bangkok and the entertainment scene today to the reality of what it was like in 1995 when I first came here. I stress “reality” because I am constantly hearing whining voices saying “it was soooo much better in the good old days” and such nonsense as this. […]
Read the rest of this entry »Welcome to the WoWasis China Bookshelf
Chinese philosophy and business practices have long influenced Southeast Asia. Here at WoWasis, we found the following books to be especially compelling for Westerners, as the information in the books on this list, while particular to China, helps to explain much about life in Southeast Asia. We’ve grouped them into Nonfiction and Fiction categories. Nonfiction […]
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