Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2393 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 872 pages

Customer Reviews

Lonely planet - safe option
I have just come back from a month long trip to japan, This book saved my behind on many occasions, but without any other guide books on japan to compare this to i will have to give it a 4 star, I found the information to be quite accurate... apart form distances and travel time (on foot) it would say 5 mins east... then 25 mins later in the humid heat and with a 20kg backpack on you arrive at the destination wishing you had taken the bus!

most travelers i met were also using the lonelyplanet guide and found it very useful!

there are very few pictures which leaves you uninspired when looking for things to do in each place! so check things out before you leave for japan

lonely planet is always a safe bet so buy in advance of your travels and make a rough plan... I would reccomend a couple of days in Tokyo and as much time as you can spare in Kyoto and Nara - the 2 most interesting places japan has to offer!

in conclusion - buy this book, i think you will struggle to find a better one for japan!
[...]

It's very good but ...
The book is of course very good but I have a gripe with LP that they concentrate too much effort on bars and discos (if the word still exists) at the expense of "culture". It's too full of (to me, unnecessary) details on where to get drunk at night. Matsuri - festivals - are what make Japan special. Without them, most of the country is fantastically ordinary; a matsuri in town can turn the very ordinary fanstastic. Some matsuri are included; most aren't, no doubt for reasons of space as there are so many. Maybe also because details and exact dates can be hard to pin down and can require a lot effort for non-Japanese readers. Inclusion of details on matsuri in the book is haphazard. Wakayama doesn't rate mention of any. Kanazawa has a tiny festival in April which gets full publicity. Fukui's enormous parade (Echizen Jidai Gyoretsu), which takes place around the same time not far away, again doesn't rate a mention. Hachinohe has two fantastic annual festivals but the town, which appeared in previous versions of the book, has been eliminated altogether from the current edition. So the festivals obviously don't get a mention. The major Inazawa Naked Man Festival (Hadaka Matsuri) I don't think rates even a mention either. Too many pities. It would be churlish to give the book less than 4 stars (there's so much good information) but I think booze sadly wins over culture. Maybe time to think of separate editions for different demographics?!

Useful but bulky and expensive.
The Lonely Planet guide to Japan is a detailed and accesible guide to the country, providing a brief historical and cultural overview of Japanese affairs and then exploring sites of interest. The book incorporates many useful features including maps, key phrases and a comprehensive index. The book is mainly black and white but does incorporate a few colour snap shots.
At over 850 pages, the book is packed full of useful information but is also bulky and awkward to fit in a small bag meaning that most days, I left it at the hotel and relied on other books. Maps of smaller cities are helpful but I did find the Tokyo maps difficult to follow and poorly labelled. Descriptions of sites tend to be factual and informative but do not always convey an interest in the site itself. Some aspects of the guide are confusing and could be revised. For instance, the orientation section on Osaka mentions that Shin-Osaka and Osaka are seperate stations but this could be clarified in the Getting There and Away section.
Accounts of hotels and restaurants are practical and in some cases enthusiastic but I do feel this section could be edited and attention paid to the budget of the traveller. Instead of selecting a few examples, the guide could list more briefly and rate them for value.
This is a very useful book, although it is as expensive as better-looking guides which do not however contain the same amount of detail. I do think that the editors should look at condensing some aspects of future editions.