<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: YEEEESSS!!! An ESSENTIAL guide to touring Japan.
Review: The purely essential guide to Japan - Dennis Kessler does the fantastic job of illustrating the best way to be a tourist in Japan. Both the writing and the photography is superb, and hard to believe that it's just one man that performed both.I found it easy to read, with very understandable descriptions, and I was truly impressed by the beauty and quality of the photographs. This book is easily equal to the Rough Guide, if not more concise, being a pocket guide.
Rating: 
Summary: Quick guide? Well, way TOO quick.
Review: This guide is too small to do justice to the destination. There is only so much squeezing you can do before things start getting so superficial that they are rendered (almost) useless. What might work for Budapest or Norway is not necessarily good for Japan: the country is so distant, so bizarre, so DIFFERENT that a guide has to explore more than merely an unusual twist put on familiar things. You need space for that, and Berlitz hasn't got plenty of space with this pocket edition, which is not so cheap, thank you very much. One may wonder: if you are going so far, spending so long on a plane, spending so much money on your ticket - why would you try to save a few dollars on a guide? Or is it that you are SO concerned about the weight of your luggage? Well that suitcase WILL feel much heavier when you don't have a good map to guide you - and this book ain't got one. You will find that, because of the size of the book, everything is scaled down to the skeleton coverage - and it's the small helpful bits in other, larger, books that make your life easier. In this book, they sure try to have colorful pictures here and there (and a few are nice), but there is just not enough text. Not enough background reading. Not enough cultural information. Not enough practicalities. At the end, you realize - why bother buying anything at all? You'll get as much info from an in-flight magazine, which by the way may have some helpful maps. No offence to writers of the book, they tried their best and they have done beautifully in the severely constrained space that they had available to them. I can understand them, but this is not enough to justify the purchase of this book. Try Rough Guide instead - I'm not their best supporter and fan, but they've done a brilliant job on Japan. This is more than can be said about Berlitz publishers on this occasion.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect Quick Guide
Review: This is probably the best guide around for the short-term (less than 2 weeks) traveller to Japan. The photos are excellent and the text is concise, informative and easy to read. It's full of helpful hints and is obviously written by a well-travelled writer who really knows his subject. Anyone going to Japan would be advised to take this little book. - amazing how much information is at your fingertips!
<< 1 >>
| 
