German artist Dirk Schwieger is either a genius or a masochist. Upon taking a job in Tokyo in early 2006, he began doing a blog that would change his life. No mere chronicle of his daily existence in a foreign land would this be; instead, intrigued by the strange none land he was living in, he asked his readers to challenge him. To wit: his readers would suggest things that Dirk should do, food he should try, and places he should go, and he would do them, no matter how odd or unappetizing they sounded.

Over the course of twenty-four weeks, he ate singularly strange foods, learned how to “trance dance”, slept in a pod hotel, practice origami, and much, much more. It was quite an adventure.

Now those adventures are collected in this terrific volume. The gag behind the title is that it’s how the Japanese pronounce “Moleskine”, Schwieger’s trendy notebook where he did his sketching. And giving the book its extra oomph, it, too, is printed within a Moleskine. So you get a sensory experience that puts you closer to the artist’s challenges, as well as a phenomenal reading experience.

And make no mistake, a phenomenal reading experience is precisely what MORESUKINE happens to be. Schwieger does a wonderful job of placing himself within a foreign culture and explaining it to an audience who can only barely begin to comprehend what the experience must have been like. Mind you, there’s nothing special about the cartooning; Schwieger is an average artist at best. But as a raconteur, he delivers like nobody’s business.

He’s courageous, too. How many people would truly be willing to take on the dares of strangers as an experiment? That he did this, and that he succeeded in creating something completely unique, speaks volumes about the character of the man with the pencil. MORESUKINE is highly recommended.

Marc Mason