Tokyo On Foot: Travels In The City's Most Colourful Neighbourhoods back

There is an honesty in wonder, truth in bewilderment. To visit a new place and soak it all in line by line must take a keen sense of the absurd. This isn't really a CARNET DE VOYAGE in the strictest sense as Florent stayed for six months, taking the opportunity to explore the different districts of the sprawling capital while his partner interned. Instead what we have here is a personal, unofficial guidebook to the city. It's an unapologetic love letter appreciating its dingiest dives to its most beautiful moments. Through the eyes of a westerner, Tokyo seems overwhelming at times; Florent softens the neon strips and gaudy consumerism with his crayon-coloured illustrations and photo montages. It's clear when you read the book this is all sequential art, but only occasionally will he break a page down into a standard comic sequence, like when he's arrested and interrogated by Tokyo's notoriously zealous police. And as harsh as that experience sounds, he remains a resolute outsider observing the unfolding pantomime with a keen eye.

In this way he reminds me of Nicholas (Momus) Currie's ongoing adventures in Osaka. Although Nicholas, ever the chameleon-alien, actively participates in the pantomime, complete with dress sense, revelling in its absurd beauty. Through Florent's you will see a city quite foreign and in its reflection a West equally as alien on every level. Wonderful.