How is this book a coming of age story?

Over the course of the novel, we pass through many of the rites of an American coming-of-age story—a confounding love affair, memories of a distant childhood, a visit from a parent, the unfolding of family secrets—but all seen in a Japanese context, as if Brown had written an all-American tale to be read from right to left. And Toshi, with his shy charm, proves much more like Audrey Hepburn than any of the foreigners he meets. Going to bed with a dream and waking up with a nightmare, he begins to plumb the ironies of loving a culture that has destroyed many of his relatives. Gently, with sensitivity and tact, the very notion of "foreignness" is peeled away to some deeper level where passports don't apply. With the beautiful control of a born novelist, Brown shows us that clarity, as much as charity, begins abroad.