I'm here to take you to live with your father. In Tokyo, Japan! Happy
birthday!
In the Land of the Rising Sun, where high culture meets high kitsch, and
fashion and technology are at the forefront of the First World's future,
the foreign-born teen elite attend ICS -- the International Collegiate
School of Tokyo. Their accents are fluid. Their homes are ridiculously
posh. Their sports games often involve a (private) plane trip to another
country. They miss school because of jet lag and visa issues. When they
get in trouble, they seek diplomatic immunity.
Enter foster-kid-out-of-water Elle Zoellner, who, on her sixteenth
birthday, discovers that her long-lost father, Kenji Takahara, is
actually a Japanese hotel mogul and wants her to come live with him. Um,
yes, please! Elle jets off first class from Washington, DC, to Tokyo,
which seems like a dream come true. Until she meets her enigmatic
father, her way-too-fab aunt, and her hyper-critical grandmother, who
seems to wish Elle didn't exist. In an effort to please her new family,
Elle falls in with the Ex-Brats, a troop of uber-cool international kids
who spend money like it's air. But when she starts to crush on a boy
named Ryuu, who's frozen out by the Brats and despised by her new
family, her already tenuous living situation just might implode.
My Almost Flawless Tokyo Dream Life is about learning what it is to be
a family, and finding the inner strength to be yourself, even in the
most extreme circumstances.
