“Disillusioned with life in Glasgow, I sold everything I had and left for a new life in a remote fishing village in Japan. I knew nothing of the language or the new land that I would call home for the next seven years.”
Fish Town is available to buy from April 28th 2021.


Fish Town is a memoir like no other. Written entirely in short, free verse snippets it remains as rich and evocative as any that are more traditionally presented. Author John Gerard Fagan, who is originally from Muirhead but now lives in Edinburgh, depicts his years living and working in Japan in a profoundly Scottish way. With deadpan humour, wit and honesty this depiction of one man’s culture shock becomes a story everyone will find relatable to some extent.
– Scot Lit Daily

It’s a book which many will relate to in terms of spending time in other cultures, but rarely have such adventures been addressed in such depth and detail. This is no ‘What I Did On My Gap Year’ publication, rather it’s an uncompromising account of the highs and lows of life lived in another land. Fagan battles his own demons as well as the barriers put in his way by the system he finds himself in, and, partly due to the way Fish Town is written, failures and successes follow hard on each other’s heels.
– Alistair Braidwood