Tokyo Junkie

60 Years of Bright Lights and Back Alleys... and Baseball

By: Robert Whiting

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki

Tokyo Junkie is a memoir that plays out over the dramatic 60-year growth of the megacity Tokyo, once a dark, fetid backwater and now the most populous, sophisticated, and safe urban capital in the world.

Follow author Robert Whiting (The Chrysanthemum and the Bat, You Gotta Have Wa, Tokyo Underworld) as he watches Tokyo transform during the 1964 Olympics, rubs shoulders with the Yakuza and comes face to face with the city’s dark underbelly, interviews Japan’s baseball elite after publishing his first best-selling book on the subject, and learns how politics and sports collide to produce a cultural landscape unlike any other, even as a new Olympics is postponed and the COVID virus ravages the nation.

A colorful social history of what Anthony Bourdain dubbed, “the greatest city in the world”, Tokyo Junkie is a revealing account by an accomplished journalist who witnessed it all firsthand and, in the process, had his own dramatic personal transformation.

©2021 Robert Whiting (P)2021 Blackstone Publishing and Skyboat Media

Great Narrator

This is a very entertaining book. I've visited Tokyo and roamed the streets. I'm no expert and don't speak the language. This Narrator is great. Whole he may not pronounce words correctly, he makes up for it with his tone and style. I believe he narrated another book called Dancing bears, which is equally entertaining. It's funny how those who are familiar with Japanese culture and the language would complain about a great Narrator who mispronounced a couple words. We would expect as much. I give the story and narrator 5 stars!

Now I must visit Tokyo

Excellent book all around. Please release some more of Mr. Whitings book on your site!!

Insightful!

The story is candid and interesting. But should hire a narrator who are familiar with Japanese language.

Great

This is one of the best books I’ve listened to this year. I got it through Audible Plus but would gladly have paid a credit for it (not something you can usually say about a Plus selection).

I’ve read the author’s previous book about Tokyo and enjoyed it immensely. This book is part memoir part history of postwar Tokyo up to 2020. The author’s had a fascinating life, of the type that would only have been possible for a brief moment in history.

Tokyo terrific

A wonderful romp through five decades of Tokyo history as experienced through the eyes if an adventurous gaijin. Only downfall was the narrator who mispronounced nearly all Japanese words and place names. Despite this, the narrative shone through and the listen was truly enthralling.