A Japanese Vagabond

About the Book

In 1986, Mayumi left Japan with a bicycle to flee from constrains of life as a Japanese girl. Without a plan nor travelling experiences, she kept pedalling around the globe – during the final epoch of the Cold War – for about 35,000 kilometres, facing various kinds of difficulties and taking advantage of people’s goodwill. This is the travel story of about the first half of her drifting passage, from Japan up to the last stop in South America – Brazil – in which there are clues to interpret the enigma of Japan and Japanese as well as a cross section of Latin America in the Cold War era.

About the Author

Mayumi (Yamada-)Shimotai was born in Niigata, Japan. As a daughter of a humble rice-farmer, she was brought up amid drastic social changes in post-war Japan. At the age of 21, she left Japan for new horizons and drifted around four continents, mostly by bicycle. Consequently, she worked in Egypt as a tour guide for nearly three years, and in 1993, she returned home finally. She began working for The Daily Telegraph (UK), Tokyo bureau, as a correspondent’s assistant, and later she became a freelance interpreter, researcher, and coordinator for foreign media. Additionally, since 1997, she has been a freelance writer.