Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A new resident in Japan finds this invaluable, 9 Dec 1999
By A Customer
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.
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49 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sogoi!!, 4 Feb 2002
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.
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25 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
No the best Rough Guide?, 20 May 2000
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.
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