David Chadwick, an American student of Zen, living in the Bay area and working as maitre'd at the famous restaurant in the Green Gulch Zen Centre, decided to move to Japan to continue his training. Each of the vignettes or episodes of this book contributes to an account of his encounters with Japan, both inside and beyond the monastery walls. Gradually, the reader gets to know the various characters in his new world - the bickering monks, the neighbouring housewives, the ominous insects, the helpful bureaucrats, the patient abbot, the infuriating English-language students - as they work inexorably towards the initiation of the hero into the mysteries.