Márton Moór: Maji-de (Underground Kiadó 2017)
We’ve all seen something that made us say, “Is this serious?” Márton Moór experienced this about every ten minutes in Japan. Japanese slang has a good term for such situations: Maji-de. Márton Moór lived and worked in Japan between 2010 and 2017 as an English teacher. During his stay abroad, he wrote a blog about his experiences, and upon returning home, this book was published, which summarizes the seven years spent in Japan as seven days, supplemented at the end of the chapters with memorable, sometimes astonishing, sometimes funny and kind moments from his English lessons.
I first read the book when it was published and it had a great impact on me. This year, I read several Japanese authors and thought I would refresh my knowledge about the country. I was impressed by the ruthless honesty of the book, the way it tells about things that are not on the surface, but deep down. Everyone knows that many people live in Japan, but they don’t know that as many people visit Shinjuku Station in Tokyo in one day as visit the Empire State Building in an entire year. We can read interesting facts like this and others like this in the book, but I won’t give more examples because you MUST read this!
