Product Description

The Rough Guide to Japan is the award-winning guidebook to this fascinating country. This new edition is published in Rough Guide's colourful design, with 24 pages of colour photos and two-colour throughout. The introduction features the authors pick of the 'Things Not to Miss', from skiing in Nagano to slurping noodles in the neon-dazzling nightlife of Shinjuku. The entire country is covered in detail with accounts of all the sights, from Tokyo's uber-hip hotels to the picturesque villages of Central Honshu and the pristine beaches of Okinawa. There is practical advice on getting around the country by train, and tips on hiking, skiing and diving. The final chapter, Contexts, gives in-depth features on all things Japanese, from temple architecture to pop culture and the environment.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #214422 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1056 pages

Daily Telegraph, London, UK
Full of practical advice.

The Times, London, UK
No-nonsense advice...the A-Z of Japanese pop culture is particularly good.

Excerpted from Japan: the Rough Guide by Jan Dodd, S. Richmond. Copyright © 1999. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
When to go

In an archipelago stretching over 3000km from north to south you'd expect the average temperature and weather patterns to vary greatly. The main influences on the climate on Honsh0 are the mountains and surrounding warm seas, bringing plenty of rain and snow. Winter weather differs greatly, however, between the western Sea of Japan and the Pacific coasts, the former suffering cold winds and heavy snow while the latter tends towards dry, clear winter days. Regular heavy snowfalls in the mountains provide ideal conditions for skiers.

Despite frequent showers, spring is one of the most pleasant times during which to visit Japan, when the weather reports chart the steady progress of the cherry blossom from warm Kyushu in March to colder Hokkaido around May. A rainy season (tsuyu) during June ushers in the swamp-like heat of summer; if you don't like tropical conditions, head for the cooler hills or the northern reaches of the country. A bout of typhoons and more rain in September precede autumn, which lasts from October through to late November and is Japan's most spectacular season, when the maple trees explode into a range of brilliant colours.

Also worth bearing in mind when planning your visit are Japan's national holidays. During such periods as the days around New Year, the "Golden Week" break of April 28 to May 6 and the Obon holiday of mid-August, the nation is on the move making it difficult to secure last-minute transport and hotel bookings. Avoid travelling during these dates, or make your arrangements well in advance.

Customer Reviews

A new resident in Japan finds this invaluable
In the past I have found it both a bonus and a sadness that the excellent Rough Guide books do not seem to be well known outside of Britain. It is sad because their books are generally excellent - not only are there guides to destinations but a superb Rough Guide to World Music,guides and CDs on different world music types, a guide to world cinema, to the millennium, etc- but it is a bonus also because when you are travelling you don`t find yourself drawn to the same places as all those other Lonely Planet and Fodors users.

This is not simply because of their users rarity, but because the coverage seems to be so much more in depth. I have just moved to Japan and in my first 6 months here I have been as much a tourist as a resident and a travel guide has been useful. What I do now have though is a local knowledge of my part of Japan (Southern Kyushu) that goes beyond a travel guide so I think I have a good perspective on guides` coverage of this part of Japan.

I have to say that Lonely Planet is a little too trendy for its own good. It seems its coverage of the big cities is pretty much spot on, but get beyond the suburbs and it starts to become scanty. Rough Guide on the other hand maybe fails a little in the cities, but comes up trumps in the `real` areas of Japan.

I live in one of the more remote, traditional and frankly bizarre areas in Japan (Kagoshima) but LP has hardly any coverage of this area. A good example of Rough Guide`s superiority is its entry on an Island near me called Yakushima. It has been declared a world heritage site because of the `Land That Time Forgot` style rain forests and cedar trees several thousands of years old. LP has only a single paragraph while RG stretches to a few pages with travel and accomodation hints.

I can not comment on RGs coverage of the rest of Japan, but I know that for Kyushu it is the best guide. I really appreciate RGs straight forward, unpretencious and holistic style (buy the RG to Japanese Music CD- weird and wonderful); I recommend you give it a try.

Sogoi!!
Without a shadow of a doubt, the best and most authoritative guide available on Japan. TRG won the Travel Guidebook of the Year Award, and for good reason. Like all TRGs, the Japan edition is broken down into several logical and intuitive sections, beginning with 'the basics' (getting there, climate data, health, insurance, sports, etc.), going through all the various regions of Japan and finishing with a section called 'contexts', which deals with history, religion, arts, environmental issues, language and so forth. Like the majority of guidebooks, there is a large emphasis on the capital, with a good chunk of the book devoted completely to Tokyo, but unlike other capitals, the megapolis of c.23m people probably deserves the treatment and still not everything is covered. Unlike its poorer cousin, the Lonely Planet series, the Rough Guide doesn't go in for scorning attractions or areas, but the text is laced with good advice and enough value judgements to help you spend your time wisely. The authors have done a splendid job of rooting out some real gems and are not obnoxiously opinionated, something which always grates when one is reduced to referring to Lonely Planets. TRG has surveys of accommodation, restaurants and entertainments for each area; it covers the whole price range but in doing so can become scanty if you are always, for example, on a low budget. The text is dense and stuffed with maps which come in very handy indeed. My only criticism of TRG is that, like all products that have to be commercially viable, it doesn't really cater to minorities, e.g. gay and lesbian travellers/residents. This is - to an extent - understandable, but no excuse not to provide better links to alternative sources of information. Otherwise, a thoroughly-researched and comprehensively accurate tome (in 4 months I have found only 4 inaccuracies in it, two of them numerical and of no significance, one a outdated phone number and one an inexistant website). If you are visiting Japan for any significant length of time, buy this book.

No the best Rough Guide?
Having travelled a number of countries, relying almost completely on the Rough Guide series, I found the Rough Guide to Japan somewhat lacking. This is not to say that the Guide is not an important companion in Japan - we also brought along the Lonely Planet edition, and (as usual) the Rough Guide was the book we referred to most. My comments are critical only because the Rough Guide series is by far the best travel book anyone of any walk of life can use in an unfamiliar country, and I feel the Japan edition does not conform to their usual high standards.

Perhaps one of the great joys of being in Japan is sampling the wealth of cuilinary delights on offer. But the Guide seems to list (especially in Tokyo) many Western-based food outlets. Yet the Guide also provides the statistic of 60,000 restaurants existing in Tokyo, compared to a tenth of that in New York, and less in London. Yet very few Japanese Restaurants are listed. Of course, there are language difficulties for guijin (foreigners) ordering from a Japanese restaurant, but it is not an impossible prospect (by the way, if you get a chance to try Horse-meat sashimi (I`m serious!), put back your reservations and try it - very delicious).

The Guide`s summarised coverage of a country`s history is usually a concise and precise affair, and this book is no exception. But I felt where some of the important historical sights were mentioned inside the book, that the authors seemed to skip over some of the details. Now obviously Japan has such a huge cultural diversity that it would be impractical to list the finer details of every historical site. and I also believe that there is something to be said for discovering facts for yourself, but I write this synopsis based on the other Rough Guides I have used, and the coverage of, say Spain, shows a lot more depth.

What I have no qualms in stating is that the index is apalling. No use whatsoever.

Rough Guide have published a Rough Guide to Tokyo (which I have not purchased for this trip), and I feel that they should perhaps split the whole of Japan into separate books to allow more coverage.

Rough Guide will always be my book of choice for travel, and I would recommend the series to anyone. I still recommend the Rough Guide to Japan, (it still knocks socks of Lonely Plant) but I advise anyone going to Japan to use several sources of information to ensure that you enjoy this wonderful country to its fullest.