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I was at the video shop with my twelve-year-old son when he rented Kikujiro, a tough-guy/little-boy Japanese film whose charming, twitching hoodlum is played by an actor named Beat Takeshi. How could I have known where this would lead?
Over the next few weeks Charley rented Kikujiro a number of times, and although I was with him when he did so I had no idea how powerfully he’d been affected, not until he said, quietly, en passant, “When I grow up I’m going to live in Tokyo.”
>"Wrong About Japan" by Peter Carey
>The story tells not only of the clash between cultures, but also of the generation gap, with the author experiencing confusion at his son Charley's absolute attraction for modern Japan's pop-culture.