"Indeed, there is a thriving alternative culture in Japan, and Karl Taro Greenfeld's Speed Tribes lets you get up close and personal with it. He walks you on the wild side, introducing you to misfortuned yakuza bookies; teenage motorcycle thieves/parts sub-contractors; porn star Choco Bon-Bon - the man with the most recognizable testicles in Japan; hard-core right-wingers who make Jesse Helms look like Carol Channing; computer otaku - obsessive collectors of computer trivia; and other Japanese characters who live their lives off the corporate clock." — Wired
"An extraordinary trip into subeterranean Tokyo . . . Greenfeld is the Douglas Coupland of Japanese youth culture." — Los Angeles Times Book Review
"As young, hip and plugged-in as his subjects, Greenfeld provides a racy, knowing portrait of the people who are usually cropped out of the country's official portrait of itself." — Pico Iyer, TIME
— Chicago Sun-Times
"Speed Tribes is a grippingly fresh portrait of an unseen country . . . Greenfeld's prose is strong and economical, his stories taut, his eye for detail prodigious. As faces and stroies accumulate like mosaic tiles, Japan's netherworld emerges with almost unbelievable vividness." — Washington Post Book World
© 2013 Karl Taro Greenfeld