Tokyo City Atlas: A Bilingual Guide

Rating:
Summary: Goes everywhere with me....
Review: I first ran into this book in 1990, when I made my first trip to Japan on business. Since then, I have had 3 editions, and, as I now live in Tokyo, my dog-earred copy travels in my briefcase or backpack everywhere I go.

MOST of Tokyo has signs using Roman characters (romaji), but, there are still some train stations, or street signs that are in kanji characters only.

Lost? You can use this map to "match" the characters, even if you cannot read the kanji! Every station, street, river, ward, neighborhood is printed both in romaji and kanji. There are train maps and subway maps, with banks, hotels, and other places well marked.

I invest in each new edition right away, and I give this book as a gift to each of my friends who come visit me in Tokyo, as well as each new ex-patriot who arrives in my office!

Rating:
Summary: Goes everywhere with me....
Review: I first ran into this book in 1990, when I made my first trip to Japan on business. Since then, I have had 3 editions, and, as I now live in Tokyo, my dog-earred copy travels in my briefcase or backpack everywhere I go.

MOST of Tokyo has signs using Roman characters (romaji), but, there are still some train stations, or street signs that are in kanji characters only.

Lost? You can use this map to "match" the characters, even if you cannot read the kanji! Every station, street, river, ward, neighborhood is printed both in romaji and kanji. There are train maps and subway maps, with banks, hotels, and other places well marked.

I invest in each new edition right away, and I give this book as a gift to each of my friends who come visit me in Tokyo, as well as each new ex-patriot who arrives in my office!

Rating:
Summary: Turns a Tokyo visit into a meaningful adventure.
Review: This Tokyo (and Yokohama) atlas is a highly focussed explorer's guide to what is surely the most difficult-to-navigate metropolis on earth.

Tokyo's system of three hyphenated numbers signifying the location of an address will strike the westerner as highly irrational, and is often an alientating concept for even the regular visitor.

The Tokyo City Atlas, a comprehensively bilingual city guide, features a foolproof system of detail and large-scale maps with every city block clearly marked. Japanese address-finding could not be made easier -- this is the one book I wish I had taken with me on my first visits to Tokyo, and it is the one that will travel with me on every future visit to this most exciting of cities.

Rating:
Summary: Turns a Tokyo visit into a meaningful adventure.
Review: This Tokyo (and Yokohama) atlas is a highly focussed explorer's guide to what is surely the most difficult-to-navigate metropolis on earth.

Tokyo's system of three hyphenated numbers signifying the location of an address will strike the westerner as highly irrational, and is often an alientating concept for even the regular visitor.

The Tokyo City Atlas, a comprehensively bilingual city guide, features a foolproof system of detail and large-scale maps with every city block clearly marked. Japanese address-finding could not be made easier -- this is the one book I wish I had taken with me on my first visits to Tokyo, and it is the one that will travel with me on every future visit to this most exciting of cities.

Rating:
Summary: This is the book I keep in my backpack
Review: When getting around Tokyo, this is *the* map book to use. It has detailed street maps of Tokyo, with special extra high detail pages for a number of popular areas. You can find your way to a specific address with these maps - down the block number or sometimes building number. The exits of subway stations are labeled. And the maps contain both Kanji and Roman type, so you can easily show it to Japanese people to help find your destination.

The typography of these maps is very clear and the layout of the book is very nicely organized. I haven't found anything better for getting around Tokyo.

The larger Tokyo Metropolitan Atlas by Shobunsha is also quite useful, covers more areas west and south of Tokyo proper , but is somewhat larger to carry, and doesn't have the detail in the "blow up" maps of popular areas in the city.

Rating:
Summary: This is the book I keep in my backpack
Review: When getting around Tokyo, this is *the* map book to use. It has detailed street maps of Tokyo, with special extra high detail pages for a number of popular areas. You can find your way to a specific address with these maps - down the block number or sometimes building number. The exits of subway stations are labeled. And the maps contain both Kanji and Roman type, so you can easily show it to Japanese people to help find your destination.

The typography of these maps is very clear and the layout of the book is very nicely organized. I haven't found anything better for getting around Tokyo.

The larger Tokyo Metropolitan Atlas by Shobunsha is also quite useful, covers more areas west and south of Tokyo proper , but is somewhat larger to carry, and doesn't have the detail in the "blow up" maps of popular areas in the city.