Frommer's Japan (Frommer's Complete Guides) [Paperback]

I found this book extremely useful in planning my trip to Japan, especially when selecting destinations outside of the obvious Tokyo and Kyoto. In particular this book convinced me to stay over in Miyajima after going to Hiroshima, and to spend a night at a Buddhist temple in Koyasan. These were unforgettable experiences. While this guide does not provide adequate navigational information (I used Lonely Planet and Japan Solo) it is more valuable for itinerary planning. I also found the hotel and restaurant recommendations reliable and interesting.

We recently returned from a 2-week trip to Tokyo and this was the guide we took with us on our trip. We had originally planned to venture outside Tokyo but due to some unforseen circumstances we ended up staying in Tokyo the entire time. So, although I think we would have been better off with Frommer's Tokyo-only guide this was a solid guide and served us well on our trip.

The guide has a large amount of information about Japanese customs, food choices (which we referred to often, sometimes to figure out what it was that we had just eaten!) and transportation options in Japan. The sections on transportation are invaluable; we were able to get from Narita to our hotel using the Limousine Bus service recommended by the book and had no trouble figuring out Tokyo's metro system after reading the guide's information.

The "walking tours" the book provides in Tokyo are excellent and we had fun following the Asakusa and Omotesando/Harajuku walking tours. Shopping in Japan is world-class and the book has a huge amount of info about where to go depending on what you're shopping for. We and our travel companions found great deals at one place in particular recommended by the guidebook, Oriental Bazaar on Omotesando-Dori, which was also recommended to us by an American living in Japan as the place he goes to shop for Japanese gifts.

I have two quibbles with the book: a. The author glosses over the offerings in Ueno Park and the Ueno Park area of Tokyo which are staggering. You could spend 2 or three days just in the Ueno area, there is so much to see. Maybe she goes into more depth in the Tokyo-only book, but I felt the Ueno information in the Japan guide was really weak. 2. The restaurants recommended in the guide are extremely expensive. Everyone talks about how expensive Tokyo is and if we had eaten exclusively at places from the guidebook we would have come back very poor indeed. But we ate at the same places Japanese office workers and housewives ate and had great meals at low prices. The book glosses over Japanese chains like Mos Burger, First Kitchen and TNT where you can get a great Japanese-influenced meal at a low price in favor of highlighting Western-style restaurants. Maybe the author has to include so much info about Western-style restaurants to appeal to the people who want to avoid eating "weird food" in Japan, but if you are scared of "weird" things, my recommendation is don't go to Japan in the first place, because even in mainstream-style restaurants the food is not wholly Western and very picky or finicky eaters will have a very hard time finding things to eat.

Overall, though, this guide is excellent and was definitely worth the money we paid for it. Some great tips in here no first-time visitor to Japan should miss.

Although this book is filled with helpful information, for example, "recommended tours if you have 1 day, 3 days, or 5 days", or "Top 10 Japanese experiences", the (rich, culturally inept) woman who wrote this book intended this for a very specific demographic. This causes a whole plethora of problems when trying to use the book, particularly if you are young, can speak some Japanese, or would like a Real Japanese Experience. Why?

1. Reviews for restaurants and hotels seem to focus on restaurants that serve Western food and speak English (how dare they speak Japanese in Japan!) and Western style hotels that have beds, rather than Japanese styled tatami mat rooms and futons. The humbling experience of entering a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant and pointing at other people's dishes or the pictures on the menu and eating foods you've never seen or heard of-or staying at a fairly inexpensive hotel sleeping on the floor in a futon-is top notch! I felt this book really neglected to mention a lot of these opportunities for cultural experiences, and I found that frustrating when looking for ideas.

2."And what good is a book with no pictures?" Alice wondered...Many of the best ways to get excited about a place is to first see pictures. There are very few, if any pictures in this book.

3. She refers to the Japanese language as "symbols".

4. In addition, rather than giving the Japanese characters for the cities, towns, restaurants and hotels she recommends you visit on that same page (this is very helpful because English translations are not always written, but you can easily make sure you're in the right place simply by comparing the book with the sign), she puts them all in an appendix at the back for inconvenient referencing. Including both the Japanese character and Japanese pronounciation of each location is extremely helpful.

Overall, the book will assist you in having a wonderful English tour of Japan, but I think you may miss out on some great Japanese experiences that do not require a lot of money (which many of her suggestions do require). Of course, this will involve a little bit of work and discomfort on the part of the tourist (although by no means Japanese fluency). Nothing compares to the satisfaction of having successfully ordered yakisoba in broken Japanese!

Bottom Line: This book is better used as supplemental reading to another book, although the beneficial descriptions of must-sees in Japan that are the most helpful in this book can really be found in just about every other guide book.