Tokyo Travel Sketchbook

Download or read book Tokyo Travel Sketchbook written by Amaia Arrazola and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tokyo Travel Sketchbook traces the journey of illustrator and graphic designer Amaia Arrazola on a four-week trip through the beating heart of Tokyo. When Arrazola accepts a month long artist's residency in the Japanese capital, she has little idea of what to expect but gamely packs her paints and pencils and seizes the opportunity to create an illustrated diary of her time there, filling the pages of her sketchbooks with curious images of life in the world's largest city. This book provides readers with a unique vision of Japan's capital, as seen through the eyes of an artist. Arrazola immerses herself in the cult of Hello Kitty and the pop-eyed charms of "Kawaii" cute culture, while conveying the collision of traditional and modern Japanese culture in the female Samurais she meets and draws. The city's cultural curiosities come alive in a metropolis that is ever on the go, as she browses sex shops, drinks pink coffee, eats spaghetti sandwiches and photographs subway sleepers. Throughout her explorations, Arrazola uses the concept of wabi sabi as a guiding principle--coming to see her own life and artworks as examples of "flawed beauty" and imperfectly perfect Zen design. The result is a fresh, often funny, one-of-a-kind look at a city that works hard and plays hard--in many surprising ways. At the heart of Tokyo Travel Sketchbook are two contradictory Japans--the glittering neon world of a high-tech ultramodern society existing side-by-side with a nation where ancient tradition holds sway and where the unadorned, the simple and the silent are prized and celebrated as much as the new, the fashionable and the trendy. These competing realities make for a memorable visual journey and a stunning souvenir of a stranger's brief stay in a strange land. From smoking laws to high-tech toilets, Arrazola finds beauty in the weirdness and imperfection of this modern metropolis. *Recommended for readers ages 14 & up*

Download or read book Tokyo on Foot written by Florent Chavouet and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 2012-10-23 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This prize-winning book is both an illustrated tour of a Tokyo rarely seen in Japan travel guides and an artist's warm, funny, visually rich, and always entertaining graphic memoir. Florent Chavouet, a young graphic artist, spent six months exploring Tokyo while his girlfriend interned at a company there. Each day he would set forth with a pouch full of color pencils and a sketchpad, and visit different neighborhoods. This stunning book records the city that he got to know during his adventures. It isn't the Tokyo of packaged tours and glossy guidebooks, but a grittier, vibrant place, full of ordinary people going about their daily lives and the scenes and activities that unfold on the streets of a bustling metropolis. Here you find businessmen and women, hipsters, students, grandmothers, shopkeepers, policemen, and other urban types and tribes in all manner of dress and hairstyles. A temple nestles among skyscrapers; the corner grocery anchors a diverse assortment of dwellings, cafes, and shops--often tangled in electric lines. The artist mixes styles and tags his pictures with wry comments and observations. Realistically rendered advertisements or posters of pop stars contrast with cartoon sketches of iconic objects or droll vignettes, like a housewife walking her pet pig, a Godzilla statue in a local park, and an urban fishing pond that charges 400 yen per half hour. This very personal guide to Tokyo is organized by neighborhood with hand-drawn maps that provide an overview of each neighborhood, but what really defines them is what caught the artist's eye and attracted his formidable drawing talent. Florent Chavouet begins his introduction by observing that, "Tokyo is said to be the most beautiful of ugly cities." With wit, a playful sense of humor, and the multicolor pencils of his kit, he sets aside the question of urban ugliness or beauty and captures the Japanese essence of a great city in this truly vital portrait.

Download or read book Clueless in Tokyo written by Betty Reynolds and published by Weatherhill, Incorporated. This book was released on 1997 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This delightful sketchbook presents a uniquely insightful take on the bemusement and amusement that are the inevitable reactions of the Westerner confronting Japan for the first time. Still unwilling to allow Japan's mysteries to exclude her, the author-artist illustrates her further adventures into the true meaning of the unfamiliar happenings around her, and turns culture shock into humorous appreciation. The resulting sketchbook is an excellent, user-friendly primer for anyone contemplating travel to Japan or engaged in Japanese language studies.

Download or read book Manga Lover's Tokyo Travel Guide written by Evangeline Neo and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) Winner** For fans of Japanese manga and anime, a trip to Tokyo is an absolute must! In this captivating Tokyo travel guide, manga artist and author Evangeline Neo travels to the Japanese capital with her mascots Kopi the dog and Matcha the cat in tow, bringing you to all the otaku sights this city has to offer. She shows you where to shop for manga memorabilia in Akihabara and Nakano, takes you on a tour of famous anime and manga museums like Studio Ghibli and Sanrio Puroland, and shares her experiences at a cosplay studio, a maid and butler cafe, and a manga drawing class. In addition to manga and anime-related adventures, Eva brings readers to all the must-see Tokyo sites as well--from Asakusa's Sensoji Temple to Tokyo Tower and the Meiji Shrine. She also introduces travelers to sushi train restaurants, hot spring baths and a kimono makeover session--even a day trip to Mt. Fuji! Along the way, she shows you all her favorite places to shop and eat, and gives advice on what to pack, what to buy, how to get around, and even how to speak a few words of survival Japanese. This manga guide to Tokyo is depicted in charming and humorous drawings and stories, which are as enjoyable for armchair travelers as they are practically useful for visitors to the city. Step into the world of modern Japanese culture through this amusing and unique guide to one of the world's top cities.

Download or read book Manabeshima Island Japan written by Florent Chavouet and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than just a Japan travel guide, Manabeshima Island Japan paints a colorful and entertaining picture of a particular place and time in Japan. Japan is made up of thousands of sacred islands, artificial islands, industrial islands, resort islands, wild islands and exploding islands…but artist Florent Chavouet had only ever visited two of them. This graphic novel is the story of one summer when he decides to get to know one more--the tiny island of Manabeshima. This speck of dirt in the Inland Sea, off the coast of Osaka, has a total population of 300, and he sets himself the task of recording everything and everyone he meets there in quirky detail on the pages of his sketchbook. Whereas Chavouet's other best-selling book, Tokyo on Foot, focuses on the physical city, it is the local island inhabitants who form the heart of this new book. Chavouet's sensitive drawings and insightful captions create instant portraits of incredible literary depth. The cast of characters who are lovingly depicted includes Ikkyu-san, owner of the island's only bar (and the bar's three regulars--skinny guy, Day-Glo cap guy and greasy-haired guy); the young Nakamura family and their five kids; the layabout Shimura-san, a living relic from the hippie 1970s; Kurata-san the policeman; Reizo-san the island intellectual in his elegant Meiji-era home; Rock the Neanderthal fisherman; and a chorus of assorted grandmothers and cats--all of whom welcome Chavouet into their community as a kindred soul. Against a backdrop of fireworks, summer festivals, fishing expeditions, and the constant hum of the cicadas, Chavouet depicts these characters so vividly and sympathetically, and describes their rustic way of life in such simple and appealing terms that we find it as hard to finish the book as Chavouet found it to leave the island at the end of his enchanted summer holiday.

Download or read book My Japanese Sketchbook written by Cloe Fontaine and published by Flammarion-Pere Castor. This book was released on 2012-09-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A land of contrasts, Japan surprises and fascinates the visitor. For Cloé Fontaine, the teeming city of Tokyo is a haven of peace: in the midst of noise and crowds she finds silence and serenity. With her brush and pen in hand, Cloé journeys from the streets of Tokyo to the shrines of Kyoto and the rolling hills on the island of Shikoku. Temples and tatamis, parasols and teapots, fountains and waterlilies - every striking detail comes to life on these pages. From Zen temples to modernist architecture, and from traditional geishas in elaborate kimonos to teenagers in eccentric and brightly-colored outfits, this is a personal and engaging encounter with a culture and its people. In her charming watercolors, modern collages, personal stories and selection of traditional hikus Cloé captures and relects the many juxtapositions of East and West, old and new.--Cover.

Download or read book Tiny Tokyo written by Ben Thomas and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anyone who has ever set foot in Tokyo or dreamed of seeing its kaleidoscopic wonders will fall in love with this totally unique tour of the beautiful megalopolis. Here are all the spectacular sights of the great big Japanese capital, made tiny enough to fit in a pocket! This teeny tome collects incredible bird's-eye views of the bustling cityscape, all shot using a distinctive photographic technique known as "tilt-shift" that has the effect of seeming to shrink its subjects— making one of the vastest cities in the world look like a miniature model. Epic skyscrapers, crowded city streets, and even sumo wrestling matches resemble tiny plastic toys in this one-of-a-kind little book.