Too shallow to really make a difference

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

This book is not bad, but just too shallow and simplistic to make a real difference. Many points the writers make seem to be explained either too little, or seem to be woven into the Japanese culture too much for a member of Western society to be able to adapt it so quickly. For example, the writers tell the listener there is no Japanese word for ''retirement''. How do the writers then expect a Western reader to immediately understand and adapt to the Japanese idea of never retiring when they have grown up with retirement all embedded in their life? There's also a much too optimistic description of how ''every Japanese person has a passion they follow'' and how this keeps them going. Why not tell the reader the whole story, about the crushing pressure the Japanese society holds on people, the pressure to succeed, to get a good job, to behave perfectly and be humble and agreeable and whatnot? Perhaps the people of a 100 years old did not feel this pressure yet in their youth, but the current Japanese society is definitely not as ideal and full of ''passion'' as these writers try to make it seem. This book is written like an unrealistic, idealistic fairytale that just does not hit the right spot. A real shame.

What about Naoko Mori’s performance did you like?

The voice of Naoko was very nice to listen to. It was soft and the Japanese words came out so perfectly, they made a welcome change to the English.

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Great book, new found love for Japanese culture

I find this book quite relaxing to listen to, plenty of little information on how to make your life better but small changes that we can do right now.

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2 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Illuminating

Beautiful and insightful principles to live a long and happy life. I want to listen to this book all over again, and I’ve only just finished it!

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Generic dribble

I picked this up looking for an explanation of Ikigai and got chapter after chapter of generic advice coupled with a review of a holiday in Japan

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Thought stimulation

The book is written and read in an interesting way. Just a bit of unnecessary repetition and the section where it illustrates the exercises are boring and not beneficial at all. It needs video illustration .

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Looking to get the print version too

Looking to get the print version too.
I loved it.
A book to have in one’s collection

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A keeper

A book I’ll keep reading. It will make me appreciate life and remind us what a miracle it is to be alive.

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Interesting

Short and simple. Easy to listen in one day. Provides some useful tips, but I was expecting more insights, not only based on a few real life examples.

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Well read

The book was interesting and gave us a lot of insight on how to live our lives a little bit longer by finding our Ikigai and by following or practicing some things things that will make our existence a bit easy.
There was a part of the book that quite a bit redundant though. It’s the wabi sabi part and they kind of saying it over and over again with the same context. I like the way how the narrator narrated the book as well.

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Shallow and exoticising text, but well read

I was hopeful about this book, but ultimately I was disappointed by the toxic exoticising and fat shaming in the book. The European authors take a shallow view of Japanese culture and try to package it as a neat, consumable concept. I was unimpressed with the out-dated diet advice in what I'd been lead to believe was a book about examining one's life purpose. Furthermore, I was hoping it would give clear instructions for finding one's Ikigai, and kept listening expecting this to come, but it never did. The text was largely repetitive and unoriginal, quoting from many other sources without using these other works to develop a new thesis.

I thought the narrator Naoko Mori did a good job with the material, but at the same time, I feel (perhaps cynically) that the publishers were trying to give the audiobook an air of authenticity by using a Japanese narrator.

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