Hello Japan Challenge - July

I often wait with my participation until the end of the month and therefore I didn't have the time to participate last month. So this time I wanted to complete the task earlier, so I wouldn't miss out on this fun challenge :) This month the theme is non-fiction and you can read all about it on In Spring it is the Dawn.

For this challenge I read Fear and Trembling by Amelie Nothomb, because it happened that I found a copy in my mailbox through bookcrossing. This is a novel, but it is an auto biographical one. It is based on her work experiences in Japan and while exaggerated at points, it does gave a good impression of the Japanese office culture and how the Western Culture clashes with the Japanese Culture. I actually did learn a lot for the little book. I read the book in Dutch and my copy only had 130 pages. This is also one reason why I am not using my normal book review template, but there is also another reason: a few days after I read the book, I also watched the movie.

I have to say that I never saw a movie in my life before that stuck so close to the book as this one. Whole dialogues were the same. I have to say that it was a bit boring to watch the movie because not much time did pass between me reading the book and watching the movie. Still the, to me, sometimes ridiculous things happening were even more funny on screen. I loved the actress, Sylvie Testud, who played Amelie. She really did an amazing job at playing the naive, quirky girl that Amelie was. Still it is not the best movie ever made. It is a bit of a B-movie but to me these kind of movies are an okay watch once in a while. The book read really fast and was enjoyable, so I honestly don't know which I liked better.

Movie trailer: (it has a wrong author in the title though.)

Have fun watching/reading :)

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