Entertaining, but a bit off

The first thing that grabbed my attention in Bruce Sterling's Maneki Neko was Sterling's use of the word pasokon. Because I know Japanese, it was clear to me that pasokon is Japanese for computer, but why would Sterling use the Japanese word for a book targeted towards an English speaking audience? In the short piece there were tons of instances where Japanese culture bits were thrown in, many seemed off to me due to my Japanese background. Talking about how Japanese business operates, monks, and Tsuyoshi's breakfast of "raw egg and miso soup" (3), Sterling is clearly and purposefully making the setting important, maybe trying to disconnect the readers from the characters. In just the first couple pages, various cultural things seem to be horrible off.
First of all, many Japanese people know that monks don't protect people from technology, and most monks are monks as a job to make money in Japan. My former Japanese teacher was friends with a Buddhist monk that drove a fast sport convertible, and my mother used to be friends with a guy that held an after school job to chant for Buddhist memorial ceremonies, simply for the money. Moving to the country to live with an older population would be just as effective to escape city life as to join a monastery. Second, to me, seeing that Tsuyoshi was eating just raw egg and miso soup for breakfast is pretty weird. Not because I don't eat raw eggs or miso soup, but because it is not normal for a Japanese person to eat a plain raw egg and miso soup for breakfast. Japanese people tend to eat raw or nearly raw eggs in with other foods, such as natto or curry, not by themselves Tsuyoshi also would have probably has rice with it, too. Again Sterling uses Japanese by calling Tsuyoshi's PDA a pokkecon, which in this day and age has been completely replaced by cellphones. Of course he wouldn't have known this in 1999 when the book was published, however, it is still confusing as to why he would purposefully use the Japanese word for terms except to make the reader feel more separate from the culture of the setting.
When Sterling brings up the maneki neko in the story, he gives a short description that includes bringing good fortune, but fails to assert its cultural role as a good luck charm to bring good business, maybe again to make the reader feel less knowledgeable about the culture. Although what the maneki neko is does not affect the story, using it in the title and leaving it as a somewhat mysterious object again makes the reader further away from this exotic and unknown culture that Sterling creates. Sterling continues to barrage the reader with various things written in ways to be less familiar to an American audience. The dialect from Osaka, meishi, Roppongi, yakuza, etc., a bunch of unfamiliar terms to an average American, are left as dangling terms that leaves the reader distant from the characters.
Sure, the story might really be about trolling in real life through Internet social networks by taking advantage of the obligatory nature of gifting, however, Sterling should try to avoid building up the importance of the setting being in Japan if he cannot represent the culture more accurately. Although the great majority of readers would not be able to tell the awkwardness in the small details, much of the text felt forced due to the poor representation of Japanese culture. Making Tsuyoshi eat things like a raw egg rather than donuts or use a pokkecon instead of a PDA alienates the reader to make the weird interactions between the characters more believable, even if the overall culture described in the story is far from the norm in Japan.

-Joshua Ziesmer