During a decade as a freelance journalist in East Asia, JD Adams was given career advice by a Taiwanese spirit medium possessed by a 12th-century monk, smuggled by a doctor into a People’s Liberation Army base to watch Internet addicts doing team building exercises to If You’re Happy and You Know It and interviewed a Filipino insurgent group going by the acronym “MILF.”
These inevitable weird situations, in addition to the book’s title (a standard greeting at Japanese “maid cafes,” where waitresses in maid outfits greet customers by squeaking: “Welcome home, master”) and cover photo of a fat man cosplaying as an anime ninja — makes one think that Welcome Home, Master would be another one of those hilarious, snarky and borderline offensive commentaries on the surreal, wacky things one experiences while living abroad.
Yes, Adams opens his book with him spending 48 hours first at a Japanese rural vagina festival and then at a large-scale penis festival despite his conscious efforts to avoid perpetuating “weird Japanese stereotypes.” And in the end, the fact that people loved his festival article and largely ignored what he considered a “serious journalism” effort about Japanese temp workers became the turning point in why he left the profession.
So things do get weird but Adams does not play on the weirdness, instead treating it as a matter of fact that is just part of the general experience. The focus here is journalism itself, as the whole narrative revolves around Adams striving to realize his dream of becoming a foreign correspondent in an era where media outlets were beginning to shutter or downsize their overseas bureaus.
We get a look at the state of journalism during the rise of the Internet age and the downfall of traditional media and international desks, a taste of what it is like to be a reporter in Asia and plenty of behind the scenes tidbits. These tidbits cover everything from learning to identify the “news peg” to the editorial process as a freelancer to all expenses paid news junkets as well the role of the journalist, especially a foreign one.
With this more serious frame, the book contains inherently funny situations. Adams’ general observations and the specific topics he delves into, however, do not shock or tickle as much as they serve as a vivid and insightful accounts on various aspects of culture, politics and society across Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, the Philippines as well as the Asian-populated Flushing, New York.
Through Adams’ eyes, we examine plenty of serious issues, albeit with interesting backstories. For example, his interview with then-Taipei mayor and current president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on unification with China was taken out of context and caused a roar in Taiwan’s “furious media cycle.” His story about toxic algae bloom, which took him across the China, made him realize the difference between Taiwan’s liberal, anything-goes media and China’s climate of government monitored, fear-induced self censorship.
Then there is also the lighter stuff such as attending Taiwan’s many folk festivals, following an indoor women’s tug-of-war team and investigating maid cafes in Japan — which brings us back to the book’s title.
Adams explains the decision in an interview — “Welcome home, master” also refers to the expatriate’s changing concept of home — but it’s still an odd decision given that he was mostly based in Taiwan, not Japan, and maid cafes encapsulate the quirky “unrepresentative subcultures” he wanted to avoid in his persistence on doing “serious journalism.”
This is, after all, the unifying theme of the narrative and makes up a majority of anecdotes in the book. The cover of a Japanese cosplayer is also puzzling — as it also plays on these subcultures and not so much the actual contents of the book.
Overall, the writing is sincere, informative yet easily digestible and does provide some decent chuckles — but one cannot help but wonder if Adams could have gone further with some of the humorous material to make things just a bit spicier.
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