“As a foreigner walking the streets, I often felt that cold Japanese stare. They were watching me, but indirectly, through their window shades or peripheral vision, to discern whether I was some ‘troublemaker.’ A warm smile did not disarm. If I turned to meet the gaze, the head would quickly turn away”

Shutting Out the Sun,pg 27

With all the things wrong in just that half a paragraph, you get some idea of what a piece of imaginative fiction masquerading as fact the whole book is:

“that cold Japanese stare”?? Is everyone reading supposed to know what he is talking about and agree that it’s cold?? And if they were looking so “indirectly”, how could he notice. Perhaps he was staring through people’s net curtains??

“to discern whether I was some troublemaker” How does he know that is why they are looking? Even if they are, I got a lot more of that as a long haired teenager in the small British town where I grew up. 

“A warm smile did not disarm” Unless the people staring are young children, I can’t think of any country where it would

Anyhow, this book did increase my understanding- of the paranoid gloom that decends on some foreigners in Japan