Adrift in Tokyo, "thirtynothing" Robert Twigger came to a revelation about himself: He had never been fit or brave. Guided by his roommates, he set out to cleanse his body and mind. Not knowing his fist from his elbow, the author is sucked into the world of Japanese martial arts and joins the Tokyo Riot Police on their year-long, brutally demanding course of budo training, where any ascetic motivation soon comes up against blood-stained "white pyjamas" and fractured collarbones. In this entertaining book, Twigger blends the ancient with the modern—the ultratraditionalism, ritual, and violence of the "dojo" (training academy) with the shopping malls, nightclubs, and scenes of everyday Tokyo life in the 1990s—to provide a brilliant, bizarre glimpse of contemporary Japan.