Girls Trip Travel Sketchbook

Hi everyone!

Guess who just got back from a 3 week girls trip all around Taiwan and Japan? It’s me! This was the first ever girls trip I’ve done, and we had a blast. Not a single fight occurred, nor did any friendships disintegrate so I guess we are bonded for life now. I traveled with fellow picture book besties: Jess Hannigan, Laura Sandoval Herrera and Vikki Chu:

First the girls flew to Taiwan and I brought them around to see the sights and eat all the food. We then flew to Japan for the remaining two weeks and saw both Kyoto and Tokyo. Along the way, we perfected the group photo as evident below:

Along the way we even managed to meet up briefly with other fellow creatives Ping Zhu and Gracey Zhang who we invited to join our star photos! Hah!

I managed to squeeze in a little bit of drawing on this trip when we weren’t busy walking until our feet fell off, eating noodles, or buying too many things. I figured now would be as good of a time as any to share a sketchbook tour wouldn’t it?

On this trip, I brought along my trusty passport sized Travelers Notebook which has weathered many storms with me since 2022. Alongside it, I brought along a new tiny palette I got for Christmas, a Kuretake waterbrush and a Dr Grip Full Black ballpoint pen which I highly recommend for anyone with hand pain.

Let’s dive in shall we?

Here’s the cover and back cover with some stickers and a stamp:

Okay, let’s actually go inside…

Okay, I actually started this notebook in 2024 not 2025 but promptly stopped using it. I felt like I was avoiding it because I was being too precious with it. I’ve since gotten over that preciousness and just said “screw it!”

These drawings aren’t from Japan, but I thought I’d share just a couple of pages that don’t have top secret stuff because I like the drawings!!

Anyways, now Girls Trip 2026 officially begins:

Here are some stamps from Taiwan:

After Taiwan, we visited Fushimi Inari in Kyoto and did some painting/drawing together after hiking up the mountain for a bit:

Here is a fun spread of all of the drawings/paintings we made. Laura’s painting is the painting on the top, and Vikki did the fun pencil drawings on the right. Jess declared that she disliked drawing outside and she was here for a vacation from drawing (which is fair).

We frequented plenty of izakayas on this trip and the most memorable was one that was filled with vintage posters and toys. I also had my first chuhai which I proclaimed had no alcohol (that I could taste) in it only to feel it 10 minutes later. Then I drunkenly drew some of the toys in the restaurant.

While in Kyoto I dragged everybody to the Travelers Notebook store and immediately influenced both Jess and Laura to get a notebook too!!! Here are theirs below:

We then met up with Ping and her friend. I talked about my notebook so much that they were influenced to go to the Travelers Store themselves where they did much damage themselves:

I’m JUST saying, Travelers Notebook should sponsor me cause I’ve gotten five people to get into their notebooks now!

Anyways, while in Kyoto, we visited the Otagi Nenbutsu-Ji Temple which was filled with hundreds of stone sculptures of little guys:

Off to the side, there was a pathway of steep stairs you could climb up to see what I regard as the treasure of this site. At the very top of the stairs, was a single, perfectly tiny egg shaped sculpture in front of which people left coins as offerings:

The rest of our time in Tokyo was honestly just a lot of shopping and eating…

Anddd that concludes the trip!

I’m so lucky to have such wonderful friends that would brave a 20+ hour journey to visit me and travel together. How wonderful!!!

We also celebrated Jess’ 30th birthday on this trip, everyone say HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESS!!!!

Lastly, here is our cheesy hot pot dinner where they sang her happy birthday and made her hold up a neon sign :)

Okay, that’s all for now!

I have a ton of work to catch up on as well as reading through all the wonderful mentorship applications I received. If you submitted an application, thank you so much for trusting me with your work!! It’s truly a blessing to see how much work everyone has put into it. It’s going to be sooo freaking tough to pick just one person!!!

Until next time <3