Japan travel sketchbook tour #2

Sep 24, 2026

Hi everyone!
Today marks one week since I posted Part #1 of my journaling trip to Japan, and I was counting the days to write to you again. Writing a blog feels so cathartic and cozy, it’s like sending a letter to the internet.

After our first very long day in Tokyo we woke up to a perfect setting…
The sky was blue with a shining sun making every detail as pretty as you can imagine. This is the neighborhood we stayed in, Yoyogi:

It was right next to the train station Sangubashi and walking distance to 2 kombini. Aaaah kombinis :)
Before going to Japan our friends wouldn’t shut up about kombinis, how the food is amazing, and how convenient they are because of the 24/7 opening hours, and how cheap… I didn’t quite understand the hype and now… Well, if you’ve never been to Japan - I’m one of those friends - kombinis are great and I miss them dearly!

In this spread I glued my first memory from a kombini purchase, a beautiful delicate package of Red Bean Mochis.

At the beginning of the trip I was still a bit lost on how to organize my pages. In my attempt to discover what works, I was constantly answering the question ‘‘Why am I journaling?’’ - I journal to remember.
I had no time to write long stretches of text so I just focused on making pretty spreads that made me remember the food and the surroundings :)

Perfect Days journaling alone at the park…

There was one day when me and Tomás could not spend another minute glued to each other… You see, we are both artists and we both own a private studio at home so we’re used to a lot of alone time. While we were in Japan, we didn’t have that. So it came a day where we were just like, let’s do our own thing for a day shall we?

And so I went to the garden from the movie Perfect Days and spent aaalll day drawing and listening to the sounds of nature :)
I catch up with a lot of pages, including this one!
On the right side I glued a frame from the manga Hirayamusi.
In this frame, Natsumi is walking down the streets of Japan.
On that day I was doing the same :)

That brownish flower you see there is actually the pink flower from the picture down below :)

On our first morning in Tokyo I started collecting flowers and leafs

Takeshita Street, the kawaii realm

As you can see, Tokyo can go 180degrees from one neighborhood to the other! Takeshita street actually gave me a headache lol
But we got to rest while petting baby pigs so I forgive the kawaii realm.
I featured the strawberry stick because it looks cute but it was not as tasty as I was hoping :(

This is me journaling on the metro. I remember asking Tomás to take this picture specifically to show you :)

This is how the page from that day turned out:

This page has everything! Ephemera, pictures, wash tape, drawings and text.
It’s one of my least favourite pages because of the big red candy wrapping… But we’ll have to embrace discomfort to take a project till the end.
On this day I bought a pair of pink glasses that have this filter in them, they just make the world warmer and with prettier colors :-o

This is my entry for today. Writing a blog feels cathartic and cozy as long as it’s a doable task… Today I only had about 2 hours to spend with you :-)
But I won’t say goodbye without leaving you with the cutest sign I saw in Japan.