I absolutely must get on my knees to grope all of those who offered encouragement along the way as this project morphed from a series of mass e-mails to a series of longer mass e-mails to an excitable and overwrought outline and finally to a manuscript that would need to be hacked and carved into this, its final perfected form that could probably still use some work.
Muchos arigatos, first of all, to Terry Goodman, my editor at AmazonEncore, for discovering Tune in Tokyo and enthusiastically bringing it aboard the Amazon Publishing train. Not only is Terry the reason you are reading this now, he is also the recipient of the 2010 Holly Golightly Award for Most Appropriate Surname. Congratulations, Terry!
Thanks to Jane Hobson Snyder for encouraging me to develop my stories into a book; to Janet Reid and Kristen Elde, whose contributions to and feedback on this manuscript have been heroic to say the least; to Valerie Tomaselli and Hilary Poole for their most excellent support.
Special thanks to my sister Laurie, who has always encouraged me to continue with my writing even though it would likely embarrass our mother.
To my boyfriend Jimmy, who never had a doubt that this book would make us rich beyond imagining and allow us to live like the gays we see on the teevee. (Sadly, Jimmy is often wrong.)
An extra special thanks to Kristin Matwiczyk (www.kmatw.com), who created the original version of the mammal head you see on the cover.
Many thanks to Aiko Ogata and Junjiroh Sumikawa for their translation assistance.
Also, to the city of Tokyo, without which the title of this book would only make partial sense:
To Toru, Rachel, Josephine, Shunsuke, Akiko, Sato-kun, Mamta, Suzie, Charlie, Bronwyn, Julia, Ruth, Tony, Tami, Holly, and Grant, as well.
And to you, the reader who heard about Tune In Tokyo through a friend of a friend of a friend of an ex-fuckbuddy or weed dealer and took a chance on it. I hope you had fun.