Eyewitness Travel Guide to Japan

Rating:
Summary: Will help you plan an unforgettable trip
Review:
DK Eyewitness Travel Guides certainly live up to their motto - "The guides that show you what others only tell you." Their Japan guide is no exception; it's full of photographs, maps, three-dimensional graphics of castle and temple compounds, and has tons of background information about all possible sites you'd want to visit and about virtually all facets of cultural life.

It doesn't reveal to you only the most popular or famous places, but also tells you about more well-kept secrets in the Japanese countryside. One example is the Buddha hiking trail in Kamakura; it's not a major attraction (though the Buddha it leads to is), but it's a great hiking trail, and the guide lets you know to look for it. Also, the Japan guide magnifies streets for you in town and city maps... for instance, Eastern Gion in Kyoto is a district made up of a warren of small streets, but there are a lot of sights to see there, including temples, pagodas, shrines, antique shops, and old unpaved roads. The Japan Guide gives you a magnification of that part of the map, showing clearly what roads intersect with other roads and pointing out the places of interest.

Definitely a worthy investment if you're planning a trip to Japan. This colorful, extensive, informative guide will give you info on practically all aspects of your trip - places both famous and obscure, food, hotels, shopping, transportation... and you'll absorb a lot of info reading it.

Rating:
Summary: The perfect addition to any coffee table
Review: As I have learned after purchasing other Eyewitness Travel Guides, they tend to provide a better read for people who never plan to travel beyond the books pages. They have many stunning photographs, but provide no substantial information for those who plan to travel to the destinations they feature. I would suggest that if you are looking for a cheap getaway, that you do pick up this eyewitness guide to Japan. Flipping through the pages is almost a vacation in itself. However, if you're looking for hotel listings, things to do, hot spots, etc. you might pick another guide to accompany this one.

Rating:
Summary: Great introduction to traveling in Japan
Review: Being a pretty busy person, and usually hating to read travel guides, I find that the DK Eyewitness Guides are the only ones I can stand reading - in fact, I find them enjoyable.

Their main force is that you don't have to imagine whether a destination would be something for you - the guide shows you what to expect, where others just tell you about it. That is the series' main force: They are very easily digestible.

That said, an Eyewitness Guide can't stand alone - especially not one about such a complex place to visit (for westeners) as Japan. My wife usually acquires a Lonely Planet guide for the place, and I read the Eyewitness Guide, and the two complement each other nicely.

The Eyewitness Guide doesn't contain enough detail to really enable you to find your way around - for instance, not all sights are listed with opening hours, and entrance fees are never mentioned. With the high prices in Japan and excentric opening hours, these are very relevant pieces of information. You don't want to travel for an hour in an overcrowded train
just to find that the site is closed!

The maps in this book are pretty good, but could be better. Finding your way around in a Japanese city is difficult even for the Japanese, and the Japanese and maps don't really go together that well. For this reason, faulty maps are not what you really need - here, it turned out, the maps in the Lonely Planet guide were more precise.

On the other hand, the book has an excellent phrase book - a lot of useful phrases, including "I'd like to make a reservation" and "How do you eat this", makes the book very useful, and we brought it everywhere (even for dinners) for that reason. Here, it vastly surpassed the Lonely Planet guide, and as the Japanese typically don't understand English at all, it's almost indispensable!

Being a fan of the Eyewitness Guides, I was at first slightly disappointed by this book compared to the ones about NYC and Paris, but I grew to like it more and more with actual use. Still, it can't stand alone, and that is its main disadvantage.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Currently I am a student and I am studying Japanese. Next year our teacher has given us a chance to go to Japan, and I want to learn more about it before I go so I decided to buy the Eyewitness Travel guide to Japan. Which is a great book to relate to the historical parts of Japan and also the tourist attractions and hotels. This book also contains great pictures of the main attractions, hotels and some of the history about Japan. This book is great for people who know apsolutely nothing about the country and I would reccomend it as a must to buy!!!

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful book...
Review: Having travelled to Japan on two occassions (once as an exchange student and once travelling throughout the country alone), I was have mixed feelings about this book.

Although the book is very well designed and has beautiful pictures (it is nice to show to guests who don't know about Japan), some of the most interesting things are skimmed over (for example Arashiyama in Kyoto has only a short description). I was also very disappointed when I visited Osaka-Castle, as the inside was very much like a museum, and I had expected the reconstruction to have replicas of the original interior decoration. The travel guide did not explain that the interior is completely modernized.

The other problem is that some of the rural areas - Toyama and Akita for example weren't really covered.

Nonetheless, there is no better travel guide of Japan on the market (at least designed for English speakers.) There is also coverage of the Ken-rokuen and the various temples.

Although I think the book is well worth the money, I would also recommend that anyone with Japanese language skills check out the area specific guidebooks designed for Japanese travellers to supplement the information in the book (there are many excellent magazine style ones on large cities such as Kyoto), and ask friends and acquantiances before travelling to spots far from where you are staying.

Rating:
Summary: Not perfect, yet still the best
Review: I agree that this Eyewitness guide is perhaps best for shorter trips to Japan - depth is lacking for more extended journeys. It is perfect for main stops - Tokyo and Kyoto are covered really well, and there is a good section on more rarely visited Okinawa (you get the sense that the authors really love that most southerly of all Japan's prefectures). The coverage of other places is perfectly adequate for a one-day stop over there.

I can nit-pick on small things: maps could be more detailed, more subjective focus could be given to sightseeing in order to prioritize more meaningfully (Frommer is the best for this at the moment) and there is the old problem of being too sparing on useful websites. However, it is still head and shoulders above the competition, and if you want to lug around just one book, this is it.

The section on accommodation and restaurants is superb, I have not seen more inspired (and inspiring) descriptions and depictions of Japanese food anywhere else. True, graphic representation of communal bathing facilities in ryokan guesthouses made me firmly make a choice of a Western-style hotel; but at least I am glad that the guide was honest with me.

Transport section (buying railway tickets, finding your way) could have been more helpful and give some handy tips instead of noting that findining an address is pain in the neck. Language section is perfectly adequate for the scope of this book.

Unless you intend to spend more than three days in Tokyo or Kyoto, you really do not need separate guides for these cities.

The best thing? Guiding you towards reasonable prices and not selling the usual story of price doom and scare travellers off with proverbial $10.00 cups of coffee. Yes, you can spend this kind of money in Ginza - so what? You don't need to. Of course if you eat Kobe steaks and fugu fish every day, meals will be pricy. But who says you need to do that? What's wrong with noodle bars and bento boxes? Thanks Eyewitness for not trying to bang the old drum of scaremongering and gently leading the reader through the maze of a totally different culture.

If you are going to Japan for, say, a week or ten days, this will be money well spent. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful book...
Review: I do hope DK will publish individual Eyewitness guides to Kyoto and Tokyo. To fit all of Japan into one guide is an unreasonable task, so I considered this book to be an overview at best. Even so they managed to include a great deal of detail and I found it extermely useful throughout my recent trip to Japan. There were many instances where Eyewitness Japan gave more detailed information on a particular sight than the Lonely Planet city guides for Kyoto and Tokyo.

I love the way the Eyewitness guides organise the information in a way that is similar to how you will actually tackle it when traveling; first by region than neighborhood. It is all very visual and user friendly, but also quite meaty when you dig into the information. One word about the maps, which I found excellent; very few streets in Japan are labeled, only the major ones, and many streets don't have names at all, so street names are not really relevant. I often found myself orienting myself by the last shrine I passed.

Like many people I find the Eyewitness guides to be an excellent resource in planning and navigating my travels, as well as a nice keepsake for my bookshelf when I return. I find their strength to be in guiding you around and explaining the major sights, I look elsewhere for information on dining, lodging and the off-beat. No single guide is good for everything. In fact if it were up to me I would eliminate the hotel and restaurant sections of the Eyewitness guides all together because they are so weak. I loved this guide for what it is, an excellent overall view of Japan.

Rating:
Summary: Eyewitness is the gold standard in travel guides!
Review: I do hope DK will publish individual Eyewitness guides to Kyoto and Tokyo. To fit all of Japan into one guide is an unreasonable task, so I considered this book to be an overview at best. Even so they managed to include a great deal of detail and I found it extermely useful throughout my recent trip to Japan. There were many instances where Eyewitness Japan gave more detailed information on a particular sight than the Lonely Planet city guides for Kyoto and Tokyo.

I love the way the Eyewitness guides organise the information in a way that is similar to how you will actually tackle it when traveling; first by region than neighborhood. It is all very visual and user friendly, but also quite meaty when you dig into the information. One word about the maps, which I found excellent; very few streets in Japan are labeled, only the major ones, and many streets don't have names at all, so street names are not really relevant. I often found myself orienting myself by the last shrine I passed.

Like many people I find the Eyewitness guides to be an excellent resource in planning and navigating my travels, as well as a nice keepsake for my bookshelf when I return. I find their strength to be in guiding you around and explaining the major sights, I look elsewhere for information on dining, lodging and the off-beat. No single guide is good for everything. In fact if it were up to me I would eliminate the hotel and restaurant sections of the Eyewitness guides all together because they are so weak. I loved this guide for what it is, an excellent overall view of Japan.

Rating:
Summary: Useful But Limited
Review: I recently completed a 19 day trip to Kyoto and Tokyo. If there is a perfect comprehensive guide to Japan I have yet to find it, despite buying 6 of them. I did find this guide very helpful for locating sights in two specific ways. First, they are numbered and the numbers are clearly shown on maps (at least for major cities). It is surprising how few guidebooks successfully accomplish this seemingly elementary and essential task. Second, the pictures were very helpful in spotting sights on the ground. I found that getting oriented in Japan was more difficult than in European countries I've visited and pictures really helped. Plus, it makes a great souvenir. I primarily used this book and "Gateway to Japan" for sightseeing. They made a good combination.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty comprehensive
Review: I thought this book covered a lot of Japan and not just the main cities. It was nice to read about so many of these places, many of which I've never even seen when I lived in Japan. I thought the detail was good and allowed me to envision being there.

After reading this I read another book on Amazon called "No Elbow Room" by Kenneth Andrews, and found that one totally amazing. It took me so much further into the Japanese culture and business world. The 2 books together really made me feel like I knew Japan.