Diary of a Tokyo Teen: A Japanese-American Girl Travels to the Land of Trendy Fashion, High-Tech Toilets and Maid Cafes

Gr 7 Up—Born in Tokyo in 1997, Inzer grew up there until her family moved to the United States in 2003. While the book refers to her as a "Tokyo teen," she in fact has revisited different neighborhoods and provinces and shares accounts from urban and rural locations. This offering will attract a wide range of Japanophiles, both for the humorous stories and her charming and colorful drawings. This is a visually engaging selection, and photographs from Inzer's visits help to ground this narrative in reality. Readers will appreciate the amusing tales about unfamiliar foods, far-out fashion, and intriguing traditions and will enjoy reading something by a teen author. One minor drawback is the title—while it has lots of teen appeal, it's not entirely accurate, because Inzer's experiences take place all over Japan. This work is a newer version of Halfway Home: Drawing My Way Through Japan, which featured a more accurate title. The main difference between the two versions is that this one has additional illustrations and is also in color.