Changes

|title=Beauty and Chaos: Slices and Morsels of Tokyo Life

|author=Michael Pronko

|publisher=Raked Gravel Press

|date=November 2014

|website=http://www.michaelpronko.com/

|video=XMPBpaXkHwQ

|summary=The pleasant and diverse travel essays in this collection draw on Pronko's 15 years living in Japan. A long-term resident but still an outsider, he is perfectly placed to notice the many odd and wonderful aspects of Tokyo life. Michael Pronko popped into Bookbag Towers to [[The Interview: Bookbag Talks To Michael Pronko|chat to us]].

}}

Adapting a Buddhist metaphor, Michael Pronko declares that 'writing about [Tokyo] is like catching fish with a hollow gourd.' In other words, it is an elusive and contradictory place that resists easy conclusions. Anyone who has seen the Bill Murray film ''Lost in Translation'' will retain the sense of a glittering, bewildering place that Westerners wander through in a daze. A long-term resident but still a perpetual outsider, Pronko is perfectly placed to notice the many odd and wonderful aspects of Tokyo life.