Matt Shane is a Harvard student and an early riser. He starts each day at his favorite coffee shop. Usually he has the shop to himself but on this morning there is a pretty Asian girl in his favorite booth. She is crying.
Her name is Miyuki and she was to have flown on a non-stop flight from Tokyo to Boston but that flight was cancelled. Instead her routing took her from Tokyo to Los Angeles to JFK to LaGuardia and finally to Boston. She began her journey with ten one hundred dollar bills but several of those ended up in the pockets of dishonest cab drivers. She is discouraged and wants to return to Japan.
Matt helps her and they fall in love. That's when the excitment begins.
We meet Vito, a loveable Boston restaurant owner and Coach Durrell a Harvard football coach who is a lot less loveable. There is a kidnapping and, of course, the FBI.
The second half of the story takes place in Japan. We meet Miyuki's family including mom and dad and younger brother, Kenji and sister, Kimiko.
Yakuza, the Japanese mafia, play an important role in the book's second half. We get a good look at Japanese professional baseball, attitudes toward suicide and government corruption. Despite many distractions the romance thrives.