Facing a migration, I was curious about possible cultural misunderstandings. Amélie Nothomb’s Fear and Trembling fairly describes the situation in a novel based location, while the story is her own experience in Japan. The book is about a european girl who had lived in Japan for five years during her childhood. Admiring Japan, she got back to work there at Yumimoto corporation, and as a new employee she was at the bottom of the ladder. As she describes in the book, she was assigned unrelated tasks like serving tea or copying files, and she screwed them up and all upcoming tasks. So she went down in hierarchy even more.

At first I felt sorry for how she was treated in Japan, and I was on her side! But if you look closely, you find out that it was all cultural misunderstandings that put her in those situations, while she was angry of Japanese system.

The book is full of descriptions and author’s point of view, which I consider as not fully right nor wrong. But still is something I can recomend.