Rating: 
Summary: Huge Disapointment
Review: Several years ago, a friend of mine here in Tokyo lamented that "all books written about Japan by gaijin (foreigners) are crap".Though I wouldn't go as far here, I was really disappointed with this book. It did help me realize that quite a few foreigners here in Japan are not-all-there. Running away from their problems would be more like it. There wasn't one person in the book that I felt any empathy for, and as someone that wanted to do the TRP course this year, I'm glad I decided against it. I wouldn't have finished the course I'm sure, but only because I'd want nothing to do with the others in the course itself. Bullied-in-childhood guys who suddenly find themselves big fish in a small pond and it going to their heads. For what it's worth, I think some of his observations about the Japanese are right on, and it was a pleasure reading about them, but something really grated... Personally, I didn't see the humor in some of the writers' racist, homophobic rantings, and certainly not in his fraudulent use of someone elses health insurance card. It's actions like that that give all foreigners here a bad rep, and result in us having a hard time finding apartments, getting into restaurants, and the infamous "gaijin dame" sign that even the author himself laments in the book.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing and myopic view of Aikido
Review: The book is supposed to be a hillarious description of Japan and Aikido. In some parts the humour was there, but on the whole it was neither poetic (considering Twigger to be a scrawny Oxford poet), nor very funny. The way he depicts Aikido is very disappointing. He stresses on the brutality of practise sessions in the Yoshinkan dojo, but does not dwell on the spiritual and beautiful aspects of a Martial Art that is essentially the Way of Peace and Universal Harmony. As an author he is readable in patches, but as a narrator of Martial Arts experience, he is myopic and discouraging. Blood and Broken Bones is not the way to relate the experiences of someone who won his shodan.
Some of the humour was exceedingly black, albeit admittedly funny. For instance, the author and his friends celebrating Kancho Sensei's death with drinks because that would get them a few days to rest during their gruelling training. As a reasonably experienced student of Aikido who has trained in different countries under Senseis of different nationalities - Japanese, American, French, German and Indian - I have to say that I could not relate to the description of Aikido given in the book.
Rating:
Summary: Poetically licentious
Review: The most poetic thing about this 'scrawny Oxford poet's' travalogue is the license he takes with the truth. Everyone is entitled to his own experiences, thoughts, reflections, and even a few misunderstandings, but as a long-time resident of Japan and a 5th dan in Aikido I found Angry White Pyjamas to be a litany of skewed truths, half truths, rank generalizations based on isolated events, and so-called 'facts' that Twigger could only have drawn from the exit hole of a horse. Japan is not always an easy place to live in for foreigners, but Twigger's unrelentingly negative portrayal, which starts off as mildly humorous, begins to take on the aspect of a supercilious sneer that really grated on my nerves. I won't even begin to take him to task for his myopic portrayal of Aikido as an art peopled by sadistic thugs, except to say that it betrays his lack of maturity as a martial artist and his wilful blindness to the higher aspirations of Aikido, which he didn't even deign to touch on. Even if taken lightly as a 'jolly little bit of fiction,' this book left me flat, as the main character showed zero growth or insight as the story progressed. I only gave it two stars because it is stylistically quite well-written--its one saving grace.
Rating: 
Summary: Tucson to New York City
Review: The title of my review of Robert Twigger's book Angry White Pyjamas reflects the distance I traveled while reading Mr. Twigger's book on the Japanese culture and his life and experiences while going through a martial arts program in Tokyo. I bought the book in Tucson and finished it while flying back home. It's entertaining, funny, insightful and ultimately quite successful in conveying his reasons for taking on a tough, year-long program in Aikedio training at a very famous school(dojo), having had no previous martial arts training. Mr. Twigger seems to have taken the course to learn more about himself and by extension humanity in general. He relates these thoughts and experiences in a way that makes the reader stop and think about how people relate to each other and more specifically how a person relates to themself. These ideas are highlighted in a very natural and dignified manner. I liked it, the year flies by and so did I,as I read the last page as we taxied to our gate at LaGuardia Airport, NYC,
Rating: 
Summary: A Disappointing Read
Review: This book failed to live up to it's title, falling short in describing aikido as practiced by the Tokyo Riot Police, the martial arts in modern Japan, and being a foreigner living in Japan. The author is in the very least entertaining in describing his life in Japan, but this becomes tiring in the later half of the book. He shows obvious signs that he and the rest of his foreign classmates are resentful and bitter. While there could be some justification of this as there are clearly treated as outsiders, their racist views on Japanese and their culture immediately takes away from any sympathy that you could feel. The author also fails to describe in any detail aikido and how it is practiced in modern Japan. From reading this book, I would not have any perspective on the martial arts as it has lived from that late 1800s to modern Japan. I would only have an accurate description on how aikido training is brutal, sadistic, and without any real value or rewards. We also barely meet any member of the Tokyo Riot Police and never hear anything on how aikido is used by these members. The title is misleading in this way because we are expecting some description of the TRP and are only introduced to some of its members in a superficial way. By the end of the book I was sorry that I wasted my time and my money. I was not only unsympathetic with the author's life in Japan, but I actually wished that he never went to the country in the first place. His story is only a testament to how foreigners should not even live in Asia and would only serve to increase xenophobic fears of Asians and Asian culture.
Rating:
Summary: Weeping knees and inspirational goldfish.
Review: This is a truly hilarious account of serious martial arts training. Robert Twigger is genuinely an "Oxford poet" (having one a poetry award at Oxford) who pits himself against the worst that the Tokyo Riot Police aikido trainers can throw at him. And it's pretty bad! The Japanese tradition is that one learns by doing - which amounts to being endlessly thrown until one develops unsightly, weeping, lumps on various body parts - and, eventually experiences the occasional moment of bliss when the assailant is flung effortlessly aside. Twigger is a charming, witty writer - rather like Mark Salzman who also wrote with similar self-deprecation and similar intense commitment to martial arts, in "Iron and Silk" (set in China). Angry White Pyjamas is hilarious and self-mocking (the western students are unfit and naive - studying goldfish for insights into the empty-mind, working tirelessly while the REAL Tokyo Riot Police trainees lie about watching dirty videos). But it is also a serious and inspirational story about the transformation of an odd bunch of European misfits into superb Aikido practitioners in Japan's toughest training dojo.
Rating:
Summary: Weeping knees and inspirational goldfish.
Review: This is a truly hilarious account of serious martial arts training. Robert Twigger is genuinely an "Oxford poet" (having one a poetry award at Oxford) who pits himself against the worst that the Tokyo Riot Police aikido trainers can throw at him. And it's pretty bad! The Japanese tradition is that one learns by doing - which amounts to being endlessly thrown until one develops unsightly, weeping, lumps on various body parts - and, eventually experiences the occasional moment of bliss when the assailant is flung effortlessly aside. Twigger is a charming, witty writer - rather like Mark Salzman who also wrote with similar self-deprecation and similar intense commitment to martial arts, in "Iron and Silk" (set in China). Angry White Pyjamas is hilarious and self-mocking (the western students are unfit and naive - studying goldfish for insights into the empty-mind, working tirelessly while the REAL Tokyo Riot Police trainees lie about watching dirty videos). But it is also a serious and inspirational story about the transformation of an odd bunch of European misfits into superb Aikido practitioners in Japan's toughest training dojo.
Rating: 
Summary: Yes!
Review: This is an extremely engaging, well-written book. It conveys the moods of a small group of people living in impossibly-tight spaces in Tokyo, of the sometimes-wide, sometimes-close, Japanese/Western cultural divide, and changes scene enough that it can be read easily at once, or picked up and put down without having to remember a long plot line, because there isn't one. DISREGARD any of the negative reviews that follow in this section. As a second-degree black belt in aikido with 11 years experience, I'll say it conveys a reality of aikido and at the same time had enough to re-inspire me in some areas that I won't look at the same again! This isn't a techique book, so criticizing it for lack of instruction is like criticizing a car for not driving well under water - makes no sense! This is lively and well-written, and obviously enjoyable to martial artist or non-martial artist alike.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining Expat Experiences
Review: This is more a book about self discovery than aikido, foreigners than Japanese. As a travel literature junky, I found it most entertaining. Perhaps I just liked the main character. Perhaps I sympathized with the plight of someone struggling to get by and get along far from home. Some interesting insight into aikido and Japanese culture (for those completely unfamiliar with either). In a similar vein to Bruce Feiler's Learning to Bow (foreigner teaching in Japanese school) but with more humor and less money.
Rating:
Summary: An interesting view on Japan through the eyes of Aikido
Review: This is one of many books about Japan that is obsensibly about one topic (a sedentary writer trying to make it through a rigorous martial arts program) that winds up very much a cultural lesson. Learning to Bow and You Gotta Have Wa are books of a similar vein.
Twigger writes with painful honesty of his travails as part of the slacker generation that found it's way to Japan in the 90s. He falls into Aikido as a way to impose discipline in his life. We see the real think - the difficulty he has with an imposing instructor, how he copes with adversity, as well as his distaste for the visiting instructors tendancy to get into drunken brawls.
In the end, the book is improved by the lack of grand revelation. It is not one man's coming of age. It is not about transcendence or vision. It is about survival, and how someone learned about themselves (both good and bad) as they persevered through a difficult time.
One downside is the title is quite a misnomer. First, the impression the book gives is more of masochism (How much pain can one take?) and intensity than of a bunch of angry people running around. Second, while Twigger is a gifted writer, you don't get much sense of him as a poet. Indeed, calling him a warrior poet seems less accurate than viewing him as a lost sould finding direction and discipline for a year.
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