Diary of a Tokyo Teen: A Japanese-American Girl Draws Her Way Across the Land of Trendy Fashion, High-Tech Toilets and Maid Cafes by Christine Mari Inzer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
There’s something immensely charming about this slender yet lovely memoir of a trip that Inzer took to Tokyo by herself at the age of sixteen. Diary of A Tokyo Teen documents this trip and captures those moments when the Japanese-American Inzer begins to understand and rationalise her place in the world as somebody who is, as she phrases it, always”halfway home”.
I picked this up on Amazon, pushing a gift voucher to the very edges as is the way with such things, and I was delighted by it. There’s an undoubted naivete to some of Inzer’s work; a few of her panels feel a little isolated and disjointed, but it’s easy to forgive this when you consider the book as a whole. There’s such a rich sense of heart here; thick and emphatic lines, fat and bold colours and some utterly delightful glances into the Japanese culture. What’s also delightful is that Inzer does not deny her perspective as a teenager. This book crackles with honesty, whether it’s wishing that the hotties on the train would look up from their phones or to doodling a cartoon face over hers on a photograph.
This is early stuff from Inzer, but it’s full of promise and joy. It’s hard to deny the richness of her work and I suspect, hope, she’s got immense things to come for her in the future. Diary of a Tokyo Teen is a delight, and one that I suspect might be inspirational.
Daisy May Johnson 