I first read Karin Muller while backpacking through Vietnam in 2003 — her first book “Hitchhiking in Vietnam,” which I acquired at a second-hand bookshop in Hanoi, filled in many of the cultural gaps that my guidebook neglected. If only I’d had Muller’s latest tome, Japanland: A Year in Search of Wa, to read during my visit to Tokyo several years ago.

I’d never felt so self-conscious and out of place, wandering the megalopolis as an Amazonian foreigner, suddenly hyper-aware of the graceless, noisy way I shuffle my feet as I walked alongside the whisper-soft Japanese. As it turns out, Muller — a former Peace Corps volunteer and National Geographic staffer, accomplished documentary filmmaker and Renaissance woman — would have been able to relate. 

More than a personal account of a year spent trying to understand the intricacies of closed Japanese culture, Muller’s book serves as a safety blanket of sorts, even a travel companion, and it’s often filled with the confessions, obsessions, woes and wonder of a diary. Muller writes with crystalline honesty about the rollercoaster of triumphs and setbacks she experienced in Japan. But it’s the author’s self-deprecating wit, keen observations of Japanese relationships and liberal dose of humor that make this book a pleasure to read.

KARIN MULLER’S TRAVEL PICKS A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle. “He has a keen eye for detail, a wonderfully subtle sense of humor, and a smooth and fluid style that carries you effortlessly along.” The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin. “Chatwin is as spare as Mayle is descriptive. He too captures the essence of both people and places - in fewer words but with equally vivid strokes.” The Nun’s Story by Katherine Cavalry Hulme. “This one is not a conventional travel book, but every time I read it, it carries me into another world. An extraordinary writer describing a profound experience. That’s a powerful combination.”

At 34, Muller found herself at the peak of her travel writing and filmmaking career, working at National Geographic on a documentary series for the society’s global television channel (she produced a documentary version of “Hitchhiking Vietnam” as well as “Along the Inca Road,” which was also a book). But as many a clock-punching cube dweller can understand, Muller had a gnawing sense that she was missing out on something. “I certainly wasn’t going to find [the meaning of life] here, in the tiny cubicles bathed in fluorescent light and the eight-year wait for a coveted underground parking spot,” she writes.

So off she went to the Land of the Rising Sun. The desire to perfect her judo in the land of its origin was the obvious ticket inside and an outward goal of a journey that quickly turns into far more. Roughly the first two-thirds of the book detail Muller’s experiences with her Japanese host family and impeccably proper host mother. “Although Japan welcomes tourists, it almost never allows them more than a superficial glimpse of its culture and traditions,” Muller writes early on, and the reader has the feeling, somehow, that if anyone can break inside, it will be her. But Muller’s difficulties adapting to life with her host family are soon apparent, with her host mother, Yukiko, drawing all her shortcomings into painfully stark relief.

Muller builds a sense of anticipation as she awaits some sign of acceptance, for that Eureka moment when the complexities of Japanese social interactions and the modern culture’s formidable ties to its past somehow part like the Red Sea to embrace a well-meaning foreigner. Or at least for that moment when Yukiko accepts Muller for the way she is. But in Japanese culture, the rules are unbending. “While I am plagued by the need to have some control over my circumstances,” Muller writes, “everyone else seems to take comfort from just being part of the team — being Japanese is like signing up for a lifelong military stint.”

One morning, Yukiko asks Muller to cut the lawn. “I take the scissors and go in search of it,” she writes, poking fun at the fact that the small area framing the house is mostly a garden and wondering where, exactly, the lawn might be. She eventually gives up and asks Yukiko, who points to two square feet of dead grass and suggests Muller get busy. 

“When I came to Japan I fantasized about training under a master for whom I could perform Herculean feats of discipline in order to win his respect and the right to be his student. I always assumed it would be Genji,” she writes, referring to her host father, a judo master and sixth-degree black belt, “but it’s not. It’s Yukiko.”

Just as interesting as the relationships Muller builds with her host family are her interactions with expats she encounters in Japan, including a 25-year-old Brazilian named Roberto who came to learn the ancient art of sword making. “If you want to learn to be a good Japanese,” he advises Muller, “you must learn how to suffer — you must learn discipline and patience.”

The book sweeps through Muller’s various experiences — from her literal immersion in a Shinto purification ritual in a remote Japanese fishing village, to her escape to Osaka’s expat world and an interesting foray into the realm of Kyoto geishas.

It’s hard not to go into any travel experience without some expectations and goals, and Muller seems to acknowledge, eventually, that perhaps hers were too lofty. “Japanland” resonates with the idea that sometimes the deepest meaning is found in the simplest interactions, whether successes or failures.

Muller’s most poignant realization about Japan is a revelation in more ways than just the Japanese interpretation — “I’m just beginning to get a glimpse past the mask Japan wears in public to its more private side,” she writes after a brief encounter on the street with a Japanese businessman who puts up an “I can’t help you gajin, sorry” façade in front of his boss and entourage, then discreetly, quick as a flash, turns away from the group and grants Muller the insight she was after.

“It’s almost like an alternate reality — a kind of Japanland — that’s right there in front of you, but you can’t see it unless you know how to look,” Muller writes. And really, that same simple interpretation can be applied to so many situations regarding the wonders of travel, no matter the destination. There is a change within that follows any great journey, although pinpointing it can be tricky. But just as Muller’s often arduous but ultimately rewarding year in Japan did, all things, in time, unfold. 

Terry Ward is a contributing editor of World Hum.

Related on World Hum:
* World Hum Weblog: Japan
* Home Alone