"Flower jeans are everywhere." "I have a weak spot for cute boys and flags." "This is what a typical ramen has." In 2013, 15-year-old Christine Mari Inzer traveled solo to Japan for two months to rediscover her roots, and the lively, full-color scrapbook of her adventures--complete with drawings, comic-strip panels, photos and entertaining observations--grew into the travelogue Diary of a Tokyo Teen.
Shortly after landing in Japan, the intrepid teen in "shapely yoga pants" and new Converse travels to Kashiwa, a small city outside of Tokyo where her grandparents (Baba and Jiji) live, to the very house where her mother grew up. On Japanese television, Christine watches "a man strip down to his underwear and hide under various pieces of furniture," "that one young guy with anime hair" and "[i]ntense period dramas." She talks her grandmother into letting her go to Harajuku by herself on the very clean subway, and heads for Takeshita-Dori, where "all the young trendy people go to shop," then panics in the crowd: "Oh, wait, I'm claustrophobic." Her advice on managing stranger danger seems reasonable: "Look like you're gonna commit homicide! But don't actually." She thinks this solo trek will be glamorously adult, but afterward she feels even more like a kid, and lonely.
Readers will glimpse images of bullet trains, Kyoto's side streets and temples, Christine's "Buddhist crime" of ant-killing, geisha, cell phone-carrying monks, vending machines and 6 a.m. sushi... all seasoned with the sometimes earnest, often comical commentary of a likable teenaged explorer. Diary is fun and inspiring in equal measure... Japan calls. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness