During my time in Tokyo early this year I actually took quite a lot of pictures while walking around the city, but it was hard to find a suitable or overarching theme to write/post then under, so I guess I’ll just share them under the very vague title “City Snapshots” and accompany the pictures with some brief commentary. I hope you’ll enjoy them !

(above & below) I was out walking around east Shinjuku and this must have been a weekend, because they’ve shut down the usually busy road for pedestrians. I don’t remember the city doing this back in the day when I was still living in Tokyo, but it is certainly a welcomed event. It was a beautiful spring day.

(above) One of my absolute favorite places in Shinjuku – the main branch of Kinokuniya, books haven.

(above) A big shelf packed full of Japanese light novels. My Japanese is real crummy these days and it would take a long time for me to finish even one of these, but I always love looking at the illustrations for the covers. It’s actually a significant source of work for Japanese freelance illustrators.

(above & below) I also dropped by the WALD9 cinema in Shinjuku. Something I love about the cinemas in Japan are these mini posters ( called eiga chirashi ) given out freely; I used to decorate my room in Meguro with a full wall of these mini posters.

(above & below) Stumbled upon a cool Godzilla merch store in the cinema shopping mall Marui. The illustration of Godzilla below is painted by my super talented friend Kouji Tajima.

Some billboards of the Nintendo Switch game The Legend Of Zelda : Tears Of The Kingdom I saw around the city. The game had just launched and there were advertisements every where. Zelda is popular in Japan like you won’t believe.

Gonna stop here for now. Look out for more City Snapshots next time !


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