Geri of Shimasu: Adventures of a Baka Gaijin by Alia Luria is a well-written memoir that is a must-read for anyone traveling to Japan, especially for the first time as you can learn from the author’s mistakes instead of having to experience them for yourself. The book touches on themes like cultural immersion, personal growth, and schadenfreude. According to the author, schadenfreude is “"a reflexive human reaction to revel in the misfortune of others,” one which she encourages the reader to embrace as they read about her troubles and misfortune. I have to say I found myself embracing schadenfreude as I could not help but laugh at some of the situations she found herself in as she tried to adapt to the difference in etiquette and culture. While her experiences were at times awful, awkward, and even humiliating, she used them as a learning experience to improve herself which I found very inspiring.  

I liked the way the author organized the book in set chapters that each had a different focus but occurred chronologically as it made it easy to follow her time in Japan without getting bogged down with the boring everyday things. The pace was perfect as it kept me turning pages wanting to see what would happen next and how she would handle each situation.

The only thing I found a bit tedious was all of the footnotes.  Typically, a footnote should be a quick explanation of something from the page that might need further clarification or details, but the author often included long paragraphs as footnotes that I found difficult to separate from the actual book; some pages had footnotes almost as long as the main writing on the page. Formatting aside, I did find the information in the footnotes to be interesting and even helpful.  I just would have preferred to have the footnotes integrated into the writing if it was going to be that in-depth.

Overall, I found the book to be a humorous and educational read that made me simultaneously more and less interested in traveling to Japan!