There's a moment in the rough cut version of Tokyo Cowboys, supposedly a documentary of foreign men in Tokyo, that startled me, causing all my built-up understanding of the situation to come crashing down from the foundations carefully built up by director Daneeta Loretta Saft. Saft comes on the screen and we learn she was married to the guy, Mark Saft, whom I'd come to identify as the creepy guy, the lech, the tsukebei (Japanese for lecherous). The man who wanted an open marriage, but more likely wanted to sample the sexual side of his Oriental fantasies.

Tokyo Cowboys is not a labor of love, but one of discontent and perhaps even closure.

This is not a collection of random men, but men whom Daneeta Saft had known during her time in Japan and the kind of men who would hang out with the dog of a husband who was Mark Saft. This is, even from the perspective of foreign men in Japan, limited, particularly since all the "gaijin" men are white and English-speaking in her movie presented at the 2008 Japan Film Festival.

Mark Saft isn't the only character in this movie. Ken is a recruiter who wants to become an actor and is willing to earn extra money by performing Christian marriages for Japanese despite being born Jewish. Dave, rock star wanna-be and part of a band, Guyjin, white rappers hoping to make it in Japan. Of all the men, Cloudy, a man with dyed blond hair who drags around his vacuum cleaner "pet," would probably have been the most noticeable in his own country, Australia.

This is not to suggest that Saft doesn't know Japan well, or at least a part of Japan. we learn more about Daneeta Saft.

The 38-year-old director is more than just a visitor to Japan. Initially coming here with her boyfriend, she lived in the country from 1993 to 2000, first in Fukuoka on the JET Program and afterwards in the capital to work in the intense world of headhunting.

Mark Saft, now her ex-husband and still a close friend, is one of the characters in her documentary. “What the film is about is the point of view of the long-term foreign male resident in Tokyo,” she explains. “The only criteria are that they’re here for over ten years and they’re men. I didn’t want the female experience because I’ve experienced that already.”

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