Tokyo Travel Sketchbook traces the journey of illustrator and graphic designer Amaia Arrazola on a four-week trip through the beating heart of Tokyo. When Arrazola accepts a month long artist's residency in the Japanese capital, she has little idea of what to expect but gamely packs her paints and pencils and seizes the opportunity to create an illustrated diary of her time there, filling the pages of her sketchbooks with curious images of life in the world's largest city. This book provides readers with a unique vision of Japan's capital, as seen through the eyes of an artist. Arrazola immerses herself in the cult of Hello Kitty and the pop-eyed charms of "Kawaii" cute culture, while conveying the collision of traditional and modern Japanese culture in the female Samurais she meets and draws. The city's cultural curiosities come alive in a metropolis that is ever on the go, as she browses sex shops, drinks pink coffee, eats spaghetti sandwiches and photographs subway sleepers. Throughout her explorations, Arrazola uses the concept of wabi sabi as a guiding principle--coming to see her own life and artworks as examples of "flawed beauty" and imperfectly perfect Zen design. The result is a fresh, often funny, one-of-a-kind look at a city that works hard and plays hard--in many surprising ways. At the heart of Tokyo Travel Sketchbook are two contradictory Japans--the glittering neon world of a high-tech ultramodern society existing side-by-side with a nation where ancient tradition holds sway and where the unadorned, the simple and the silent are prized and celebrated as much as the new, the fashionable and the trendy. These competing realities make for a memorable visual journey and a stunning souvenir of a stranger's brief stay in a strange land. From smoking laws to high-tech toilets, Arrazola finds beauty in the weirdness and imperfection of this modern metropolis. *Recommended for readers ages 14 & up*

Super cute notebook with a cool anime girl and the quote "I Love Anime" on the cover. Great notebook for school or private use. Use it as a diary, notepad for sketching and writing or anything else.

que será surreality a game of musical chairs takes a sharp turn. nano pulls out all the stops in a battle against a fry thief. a bizarre body-swap situation occurs in the shinonome household. yuuko displays a talent for naming things. we get a glimpse of mio’s dream job, as everyone writes a letter to their future selves...

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. Florent Chavouet, a young graphic artist, spent six months exploring Tokyo while his girlfriend interned at a company there. Each day he would set forth with a pouch full of color pencils and a sketchpad, and visit different neighborhoods. This stunning book records the city that he got to know during his adventures. 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. Here you find businessmen and women, hipsters, students, grandmothers, shopkeepers, policemen, and other urban types and tribes in all manner of dress and hairstyles. A temple nestles among skyscrapers; the corner grocery anchors a diverse assortment of dwellings, cafes, and shops--often tangled in electric lines. The artist mixes styles and tags his pictures with wry comments and observations. 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. This very personal guide to Tokyo is organized by neighborhood with hand-drawn maps that provide an overview of each neighborhood, but what really defines them is what caught the artist's eye and attracted his formidable drawing talent. Florent Chavouet begins his introduction by observing that, "Tokyo is said to be the most beautiful of ugly cities." With wit, a playful sense of humor, and the multicolor pencils of his kit, he sets aside the question of urban ugliness or beauty and captures the Japanese essence of a great city in this truly vital portrait.

The animations of Japan's Studio Ghibli are amongst the highest regarded in the movie industry. Their delightful films rank alongside the most popular non-English language films ever made, with each new eagerly-anticipated release a guaranteed box-office smash. Yet this highly profitable studio has remained fiercely independent, producing a stream of imaginative and individual animations. The studio's founders, long-time animators Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki, have created timeless masterpieces. Although their films are distinctly Japanese their themes are universal—humanity, community, and a love for the environment. No other film studio, animation or otherwise, comes close to matching Ghibli for pure cinematic experience. All their major works are examined here, as well the early output of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, exploring the cultural and thematic threads that bind these films together.

Following his English edition of Alma Mahler-Werfel's Diaries 1898-1902, Antony Beaumont presents both the first comprehensive biography of the composer and conductor Alexander Zemlinsky (1871-1942) and a critical assessment of his works. "Zemlinsky--all hail to you!" wrote the young Alma. "All hail to you and your art." When she first met him, Zemlinsky was the most promising Viennese composer of his generation. In 1901, when Alma abruptly ended their passionate love affair in order to marry Gustav Mahler, the crisis served to transform Zemlinsky's talent into mastery. Only long after his death, however, did his music begin to receive its due. Zemlinsky was central to the musical life of Vienna and Central Europe, and this brilliant biography illuminates a social and cultural milieu that disappeared forever with the triumph of Hitler's Reich. The author details the composer's early years as a protégé of Brahms and Mahler, his complex friendship with his brother-in-law Arnold Schoenberg, the influence of his teaching on the boy-prodigy Erich Korngold, his kindly and helpful attitude toward the hypersensitive Anton Webern, and his heartfelt friendship with Alban Berg. Zemlinsky was one of the leading conductors of the interwar period, considered by both Schoenberg and Stravinsky the finest they had ever heard. The author charts Zemlinsky's career from Vienna to Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Prague, providing insight into his Catholic-Sephardic background and investigating his keen interest in esoteric aspects of music, including color symbolism and numerology. The author's analyses of Zemlinsky's major scores are accessible and fully contextualized.

A story about a man who works at a mountain lodge. He lost his mountaineering partner when the friend tried to climb Himalaya. When his friend's daughter is missing, he tries to find her in his friend's place.