Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have a fairly large collection of Japanese language textbooks (many of which I've bought at Amazon over the years). Much to my surprise, I've found that I consistently use all of them and none of them collect much dust. However, with this particular title, I've finally found a real dud among my Japanese language learning texts. The biggest problem is the lack of an index (which pretty much means that, while some people may find the book funny to thumb through, they won't find it useful as a reference book). The second big problem is that the author injects far too much of himself into the book. He very loudly and aggressively wants us all to know that he is the hippest person to ever walk the streets of Japan. That, combined with his endless, jarring hip hop/street slang is very distracting and annoying (it was annoying enough almost two decades ago when the middle-class Vanilla Ice tried to convince us he came from the 'hood; it's even more annoying now). I would also fault the author's grasp of the Japanese language. His "English" translations of a lot of phrases include many expletives that simply aren't there in the original Japanese text. Last, but not least, is that the author doesn't seem very well informed about Japan. He informs us that Japanese cops don't carry guns (not true) and that they're the biggest jerks in the world. The fact is, if the Tokyo police were indeed "jerks" to the author, he richly deserved it (as he gleefully spends much of the book talking about all the fights and reckless trouble that he got into while in Japan). For the record, I've visited Japan and found it to the safest, most peaceful nation I've ever seen. The Japanese people are some of the most polite folks on earth--but you'd think they were all a bunch of violent thugs after reading this book. The world still needs a good comprehensive reference book that rounds up Japan's trendy language and street slang. This book isn't it.