Tokyo on Foot

Florent Chavouet is a French graphic artist. He spent six months in Tokyo ("the most beautiful of ugly cities") where his girlfriend had an internship. He spent his days there riding a bicycle to various neighborhoods and sketching them. Eventually these became a graphic memoir, Tokyo on Foot. The book is full of great hand drawn maps. Here is part of the table of contents.

Here is a detail from the house they lived in in Ochiai.

The circled numbers show where sketches on those corresponding pages were drawn. Here are some details from the busy Shinjuku neighborhood.

Scattered comments such as "smells of Yakitori" really bring the place to life.

Gakushuin University

And finally a map of a bike trip to Kamakura and the Miura Peninsula to the south.

The non-map sketches are also wonderful. If you're fascinated by Japan this is a wonderful, unique book for armchair travel