The quintessential global wanderer, Pico Iyer has published two books on Japan this year: Autumn Light and A Beginner's Guide to Japan. After thirty-plus years in Japan, Iyer can use everything from anime to Oscar Wilde to show how his adopted home is both hauntingly familiar and yet remains strange.

For years, Pico Iyer has split his time between California and Nara, Japan, where he and his Japanese wife, Hiroko, have a small home. But when his father-in-law dies suddenly, Iyer begins to grapple with the question of how to hold on to the things we love in a universe of impermanence.  In a country whose calendar is marked with occasions honoring the dead, Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells leads us through the year following his father-in-law’s death, and as the maple leaves begin to redden, Iyer offers us a singular view of Japan, in the season that reminds us to take nothing for granted.

A Beginner’s Guide to Japan: Observations and Provocations is a playful and profound guidebook full of surprising, brief, incisive glimpses into Japanese culture. Iyer’s adventures and observations as he travels from a meditation-hall to a love-hotel, from West Point to Kyoto Station, make for a constantly surprising series of provocations guaranteed to pique the interest and curiosity of those who don’t know Japan, and remind those who do of the complexities and surprises that Japan presents to visitors and long-term residents alike. 

Followed by a book sale and signing. 

REGISTRATION REQUIRED, PLEASE FOLLOW LINK

https://asiasociety.org/new-york/events/pico-iyer-beginners-guide-japan
$15 members; $17 students/seniors; $20 nonmembers