Japan (Eyewitness Travel Guides)

Rating:
Summary: Will help you plan an unforgettable trip
Review:
DK Eyewitness Travel Guides certainly live up to their motto - "The guides that show you what others only tell you." Their Japan guide is no exception; it's full of photographs, maps, three-dimensional graphics of castle and temple compounds, and has tons of background information about all possible sites you'd want to visit and about virtually all facets of cultural life.

It doesn't reveal to you only the most popular or famous places, but also tells you about more well-kept secrets in the Japanese countryside. One example is the Buddha hiking trail in Kamakura; it's not a major attraction (though the Buddha it leads to is), but it's a great hiking trail, and the guide lets you know to look for it. Also, the Japan guide magnifies streets for you in town and city maps... for instance, Eastern Gion in Kyoto is a district made up of a warren of small streets, but there are a lot of sights to see there, including temples, pagodas, shrines, antique shops, and old unpaved roads. The Japan Guide gives you a magnification of that part of the map, showing clearly what roads intersect with other roads and pointing out the places of interest.

Definitely a worthy investment if you're planning a trip to Japan. This colorful, extensive, informative guide will give you info on practically all aspects of your trip - places both famous and obscure, food, hotels, shopping, transportation... and you'll absorb a lot of info reading it.

Rating:
Summary: Great introduction to traveling in Japan
Review: Being a pretty busy person, and usually hating to read travel guides, I find that the DK Eyewitness Guides are the only ones I can stand reading - in fact, I find them enjoyable.

Their main force is that you don't have to imagine whether a destination would be something for you - the guide shows you what to expect, where others just tell you about it. That is the series' main force: They are very easily digestible.

That said, an Eyewitness Guide can't stand alone - especially not one about such a complex place to visit (for westeners) as Japan. My wife usually acquires a Lonely Planet guide for the place, and I read the Eyewitness Guide, and the two complement each other nicely.

The Eyewitness Guide doesn't contain enough detail to really enable you to find your way around - for instance, not all sights are listed with opening hours, and entrance fees are never mentioned. With the high prices in Japan and excentric opening hours, these are very relevant pieces of information. You don't want to travel for an hour in an overcrowded train
just to find that the site is closed!

The maps in this book are pretty good, but could be better. Finding your way around in a Japanese city is difficult even for the Japanese, and the Japanese and maps don't really go together that well. For this reason, faulty maps are not what you really need - here, it turned out, the maps in the Lonely Planet guide were more precise.

On the other hand, the book has an excellent phrase book - a lot of useful phrases, including "I'd like to make a reservation" and "How do you eat this", makes the book very useful, and we brought it everywhere (even for dinners) for that reason. Here, it vastly surpassed the Lonely Planet guide, and as the Japanese typically don't understand English at all, it's almost indispensable!

Being a fan of the Eyewitness Guides, I was at first slightly disappointed by this book compared to the ones about NYC and Paris, but I grew to like it more and more with actual use. Still, it can't stand alone, and that is its main disadvantage.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful book...
Review: I do hope DK will publish individual Eyewitness guides to Kyoto and Tokyo. To fit all of Japan into one guide is an unreasonable task, so I considered this book to be an overview at best. Even so they managed to include a great deal of detail and I found it extermely useful throughout my recent trip to Japan. There were many instances where Eyewitness Japan gave more detailed information on a particular sight than the Lonely Planet city guides for Kyoto and Tokyo.

I love the way the Eyewitness guides organise the information in a way that is similar to how you will actually tackle it when traveling; first by region than neighborhood. It is all very visual and user friendly, but also quite meaty when you dig into the information. One word about the maps, which I found excellent; very few streets in Japan are labeled, only the major ones, and many streets don't have names at all, so street names are not really relevant. I often found myself orienting myself by the last shrine I passed.

Like many people I find the Eyewitness guides to be an excellent resource in planning and navigating my travels, as well as a nice keepsake for my bookshelf when I return. I find their strength to be in guiding you around and explaining the major sights, I look elsewhere for information on dining, lodging and the off-beat. No single guide is good for everything. In fact if it were up to me I would eliminate the hotel and restaurant sections of the Eyewitness guides all together because they are so weak. I loved this guide for what it is, an excellent overall view of Japan.

Rating:
Summary: Eyewitness is the gold standard in travel guides!
Review: I do hope DK will publish individual Eyewitness guides to Kyoto and Tokyo. To fit all of Japan into one guide is an unreasonable task, so I considered this book to be an overview at best. Even so they managed to include a great deal of detail and I found it extermely useful throughout my recent trip to Japan. There were many instances where Eyewitness Japan gave more detailed information on a particular sight than the Lonely Planet city guides for Kyoto and Tokyo.

I love the way the Eyewitness guides organise the information in a way that is similar to how you will actually tackle it when traveling; first by region than neighborhood. It is all very visual and user friendly, but also quite meaty when you dig into the information. One word about the maps, which I found excellent; very few streets in Japan are labeled, only the major ones, and many streets don't have names at all, so street names are not really relevant. I often found myself orienting myself by the last shrine I passed.

Like many people I find the Eyewitness guides to be an excellent resource in planning and navigating my travels, as well as a nice keepsake for my bookshelf when I return. I find their strength to be in guiding you around and explaining the major sights, I look elsewhere for information on dining, lodging and the off-beat. No single guide is good for everything. In fact if it were up to me I would eliminate the hotel and restaurant sections of the Eyewitness guides all together because they are so weak. I loved this guide for what it is, an excellent overall view of Japan.

Rating:
Summary: Useful But Limited
Review: I recently completed a 19 day trip to Kyoto and Tokyo. If there is a perfect comprehensive guide to Japan I have yet to find it, despite buying 6 of them. I did find this guide very helpful for locating sights in two specific ways. First, they are numbered and the numbers are clearly shown on maps (at least for major cities). It is surprising how few guidebooks successfully accomplish this seemingly elementary and essential task. Second, the pictures were very helpful in spotting sights on the ground. I found that getting oriented in Japan was more difficult than in European countries I've visited and pictures really helped. Plus, it makes a great souvenir. I primarily used this book and "Gateway to Japan" for sightseeing. They made a good combination.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty comprehensive
Review: I thought this book covered a lot of Japan and not just the main cities. It was nice to read about so many of these places, many of which I've never even seen when I lived in Japan. I thought the detail was good and allowed me to envision being there.

After reading this I read another book on Amazon called "No Elbow Room" by Kenneth Andrews, and found that one totally amazing. It took me so much further into the Japanese culture and business world. The 2 books together really made me feel like I knew Japan.

Rating:
Summary: These are Fabulous Books
Review: Japan is a place one does not visit every day and it is expensive. Also I like to go well armed with maps and books because unlike the USA or Canada some areas have no english signs so the more information the better. I would recommend this book, and at least one book on Japan's society - see Amazon.com plus a good map book.

I first discovered these books (a series Eyewitness Travel) by accident. The photos and desicriptions and cutaway drawings are excellent. Plus they throw in some history and details on the art and many other things of interest including places to eat. A solid effort - lots of stuff to see and absorb. What is attractive about this book is that it pulls a lot of things together such as history and culture and urban areas. But the book brings it all to life with just magnificent photos and maps.

Jack in Toronto

Rating:
Summary: Eye-catching guide is a worthy investment
Review: This is sort of a "Japan! Wow!" type of guide, full of eye-popping graphics and catchy factoids. It is a very fun guide, and does a great job of engaging enthusiasm for Japan and its wonders. The makers definitely know their audience, and all of the weird and wild parts of the country and its culture are captured.

Nothing off the beaten path here, only the major attractions of each city/region are represented. It is wide but not deep. Pricing information and such is well done, and gives an accurate picture of what to expect. Tidbits of culture and history help explain what you will be seeing and make for interesting overall reading.

Even as someone living in Japan, I find this guide to be valuable and fun. It has sparked my interests in several sites and is a great reminder of places that I have been.

For a deeper travel guide, I recommend "Gateway to Japan." That combined with "Exploring Japan" should be all you need to plan a snazzy and enjoyable trip.

Rating:
Summary: Eye-catching guide is a worthy investment
Review: This is sort of a "Japan! Wow!" type of guide, full of eye-popping graphics and catchy factoids. It is a very fun guide, and does a great job of engaging enthusiasm for Japan and its wonders. The makers definitely know their audience, and all of the weird and wild parts of the country and its culture are captured.

Nothing off the beaten path here, only the major attractions of each city/region are represented. It is wide but not deep. Pricing information and such is well done, and gives an accurate picture of what to expect. Tidbits of culture and history help explain what you will be seeing and make for interesting overall reading.

Even as someone living in Japan, I find this guide to be valuable and fun. It has sparked my interests in several sites and is a great reminder of places that I have been.

For a deeper travel guide, I recommend "Gateway to Japan." That combined with "Exploring Japan" should be all you need to plan a snazzy and enjoyable trip.

Rating:
Summary: A disappointing DK guide
Review: Until recently, I was a devoted fan of the Eyewitness Guide series. (My bookshelf holds their travel guides to France, Bali, South Africa, and even some US cities among others.) However, my recent trip to Kyoto and Tokyo proved too much for the series and I thought other travelers deserved a warning.

The Eyewitness Japan volume is an interesting cultural introduction, but a woefully insufficient travel guide to this complex country, even for a very short trip such as the one I took. Some thoughts:

(1) The maps (particularly outside of Tokyo) are not at all comprehensive. It would not be possible to find one's way around Kyoto, for example, without another guidebook. There is a high-level overview map of Kyoto (without most streets marked) and some cut-away maps of particular tiny areas, but you could not piece together one usable city map out of it.

(2) The phrasebook is only four pages long and doesn't contain some of the most basic and useful information. Example: It doesn't contain the word for "cash machine," and Japan appears to be a heavily cash-oriented country.

(3) The hotel information is wholly insufficient. It lists few hotels and then gives only one short sentence about each hotel. It doesn't make any suggestions as to which neighborhoods would be better to stay in, either.

(4) The greatest strength of the book is in its cultural information and its visuals. For example, after finding the Kyoto "philosopher's walk" on a map in another guidebook, we were able to learn from the Eyewitness book why it was named the philosopher's walk and some interesting (but not particularly practical) facts about the walk. However, here again there is a hidden weakness: unlike other guidebooks, the Eyewitness book doesn't seem to take a stand on which sites are worth seeing in limited time.

In such a complex country (particularly if, like me, you do not speak Japanese), you need a more comprehensive and more opinionated guide. All in all, in terms of survival and travel enjoyment, you're better off with the other travel books we had with us: Lonely Planet Japan (which has great opinions on what to visit) and Time Out Tokyo. I also recommend the Berlitz phrasebook on Japanese to get around; it's small and contains lots of useful phrases, although sometimes in strange places. Also, if you're leaving Tokyo, don't forget the bilingual maps.

Happy traveling!
Lydia

PS: This particular Eyewitness book (perhaps I'd missed this on other trips) seems oriented towards the high-end, perhaps business, traveler. Whereas the eyewitness guide described a particular Tokyo ryokan as having a convivival lounge area that encouraged travelers to meet people, exchange stories, and strategize about their travels, Eyewitness would describe a particular ryokan as not having a particularly nice view. Perhaps that's something to keep in mind, depending on your interests.