This very personal guide to Tokyo is organized by neighborhood with hand-drawn maps that provide an overview of each neighborhood, but what defines them is what caught the artist's eye and attracted his formidable drawing talent. 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. The artist mixes styles and tags his pictures with wry comments and observations. A temple nestles among skyscrapers the corner grocery anchors a diverse assortment of dwellings, cafes, and shops-often tangled in electric lines. Here you find businessmen and businesswomen, hipsters, students, grandmothers, shopkeepers, police officers, and other urban types and tribes in all manner of dress and hairstyles. 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. This stunning book records the city that he got to know during his adventures. Each day he would set forth with a pouch full of color pencils and a sketchpad, and visit different neighborhoods. Florent Chavouet, a young graphic artist, spent six months exploring Tokyo while his girlfriend interned at a company there. 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.

Tokyo on Foot by Florent Chavouet