All Due Respect by Peter Hessler
Another glorious profile by Hessler – this time on the life of an old friend who has realized a fictional version of himself by moving to Japan. The wimpy kid who was so cross-eyed he couldn’t drive himself to high school transforms (somewhere high over the pacific) in to a hard-boiled reporter on the Tokyo crime beat who lives under police protection, smokes like a chimney, drinks like a fish and rarely sleeps (but when he does, is sure to wake up beside some high-profile mistress with links to the yakuza). It’s quite a trick.