It's actually a good way to unravel the story as we many of us outsiders to Japanese culture experience the narrative mainly through his eyes. To make matters more difficult 1999's Tokyo is one in which Jake and his boss Amy must navigate a world of racism and misogyny although Amy is a colleague because she is a woman she is expected to pour drinks for the men at business functions she must repeatedly fend off men's advances and stays at work longer to prove that she has what it takes to compete with the men. Jake straight up was almost fired day one for just being white and all of this can be frustrating.
Amy and Jake find out several police forces weren't following up on sexual assault cases and when they brought forward the story it was buried in the back of the paper even though it seems all their work was meaningless, Amy says it is but one brick in a wall of information that one day cannot be ignored. It's this persistence in the face of adversity that endears us to many of these characters. Sam's ambitions are closely related to taking back control of her own life, they started when she moved away from her controlling mormon father to become a missionary in japan eventually stealing 40 000 worth of yen from a local mission fund to run away and start a new life as a hostess in Tokyo there she finds herself under the control of a new man duke who runs the ‘Onix’ nightclub but sam wants to one day run her own club. At the end of season 1, we can see her making a deal with Hitoshi Ashida. Sam really had no other choice all the money she was saving was stolen and no bank would give her a loan to allow her to make the final payment on her new club. By going into business with the Yakuza it sets up a lot of mess for the next season. Considering Sato her former lover will be the liaison between her and the gang and Sato.