This is one I’ll be thinking about for awhile. In the Miso Soup is a well written and interesting look at different cultures, as experienced by a Japanese tour guide’s two day contract with an American client. It may sound boring, but this isn’t a stroll through the local hot spots. 

Kenji is an escort for tourists looking to explore the darker side of the city and willing to pay for the various sexual depravities available in a foreign land, but he quickly realizes Frank has a much more sordid appetite. 

There was one scene of descriptive extreme violence, but because it involved characters I had no attachment to and was told through such a detached narrative, it didn’t have as much of an emotional impact. The focus of the story wasn’t the violence, but Kenji and Frank’s relationship. The philosophical discussions between the two main characters and Kenji’s internal battle about how to process his experience both surprised and fascinated me.