Rating: 
Summary: My travel companion
Review: After four and a half years living in Japan , five return trips and purchases of many guide books of uneven quality I was delighted to come across "Gateway to Japan". It became my most reliable travel companion. On one trip through the back roads of Japan during which I saw few English speakers and was forced to fall back on my sketchy Japanese, with little to read in English I found that "Gateway to Japan" became my bedtime reading. It has served me well. It is well organized and most informative.
Rating:
Summary: My travel companion
Review: After four and a half years living in Japan , five return trips and purchases of many guide books of uneven quality I was delighted to come across "Gateway to Japan". It became my most reliable travel companion. On one trip through the back roads of Japan during which I saw few English speakers and was forced to fall back on my sketchy Japanese, with little to read in English I found that "Gateway to Japan" became my bedtime reading. It has served me well. It is well organized and most informative.
Rating:
Summary: The greatest
Review: Having lived in Japan for the past 6 years, I've had the opportunity to use all of the major guidebooks (and quite a few of the minor ones as well), and without a doubt, the most useful and informative guidebook is this one. Of course Lonely Planet has lots of information about restaurants and hotels, but you can get the tourist information center to help you with hotels and wherever you walk you can find plenty of nice restaurants. What you really want is a purpose to visit the places that you are visiting. Lonely Planet just tells you what things are, but this guidebooks tells you the history of each place, so you can understand why each place is important. If you're looking for a guidebook to tell you where the clubs, hangouts, and youth hostels are, then maybe this isn't the book you're looking for. However, if you're looking for a nice meaty book to feed you mind on, this is it.
Rating:
Summary: The Indispensable Guide to Japan
Review: I first used this guide when I lived in Japan, and I quickly realized it was the best guidebook I'd ever had. It is unbelievably detailed and informative. You can learn a tremendous amount about the culture, history, and people of Japan before you even step off the plane. You'll want to take this book, for example, when visiting the temples, since it provides a thorough exposition of their architecture and symbolism. What I like especially about this guide, however, is the fact that it's not just one in a series. Rather, it's the product of two people who really know and love Japan, and it shows in the quality of their writing and the depth of the coverage. I can't recommend it highly enough!By the way, one reviewer lamented the odd size of this book, but rest assured, this 1998 version is more compact and portable than previous editions.
Rating:
Summary: the most comprehensive and useful guide to travel in Japan
Review: I have used Gateway to Japan (the earlier version) on three trips to Japan. I have found the authors' concise but complete approach to almost everywhere you will pass through on a journey to Japan incredibly useful to me, whether visiting a large city like Kyoto or a small town on Shikoku. More than any other guidebook, the authors give you advice on what to visit, where to eat, and where to stay. Every ryokan they have recommended has been perfect. I travel on a small budget and this is the only guidebook that I take with me, knowing that wherever I go, they will have good recommendations. I repeat -- this is an awesome book -- it should be required for anyone who wants to travel independently in Japan.
Rating:
Summary: The best guide book I have ever used.
Review: I haved used the Gateway to Japan guide book on two trips to Japan. And I have to say, that this guide book is the best. This book isn't the most colorful, it doesn't list the best hotels and restaurants, however it does much more. The Gateway book tells you not only where to go, but also gives you in depth information and history about the locations. This is a book that will complement your trip and add background information to make your visits complete. ON a personal note, I got lost one day in '96 while trying to find the 47 Ronin temple. And thanks to the Gateway book, I was able to make it home. Again, its the best. This is the book to take to Japan.
Rating:
Summary: Best Japanese Guidebook by far!!
Review: I live in Japan and regularly use this guidebook for both weekend trips and longer trips. Not only is there incredible detail about each location and place to stay, but the rating system is also helpful in prioritizing what to see and where to stay, eat, etc. It really is the best (I have tried all of the others too!).
Rating:
Summary: The only guide you will need for Japan
Review: I read many reviews of Japan guidebooks and bought severalof them. This book was, by far, the best. A great combination of history, background and practical details, I used this book to prepare for my trip on deciding what to see, as an on-the-spot guide during the visit and to fill in details in my travel diary after I returned home. Highly recommended--just add a Japanese phrase book, some detailed maps and you are ready to go to Japan!
Rating:
Summary: The Best of the Lot
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. This was the best of the lot. Especially helpful was the star ranking of sights which was very well done and generally reliable. The descriptions were a bit brief for my taste but more comprehensive than the other guidebooks I had. The historical and cultural information was outstanding. The restraunt and hotel information was useful although I supplimented it with other books. The only glaring weakness was finding sights using the maps in the book. The sights aren't numbered, and it was sometimes hard to even find the right map to use. Because of the map problems, it would be too frustrating to use this as a sole guide. In all other respects, it's good to excellent. I primarily used this book and the Eyewitness Japan guide for sightseeing. They made a good combination.
Rating: 
Summary: Mostly a miss with few hits
Review: I took this book with me to Japan and I was disappointed. There is plenty of detail about history, sumo wrestling, and art with little practical information. Plus I found errors in directions, maps etc. Here are my issues with this book.
1) The coverage of how to use the train system is horrible. There is more than just the JR system, much more. Don't buy the rail pass unless you plan to do major traveling all over. It skips things like basic ticket purchasing, transfer tickets, what the signs mean when red/green/black/flashing, how to get on and off a platform etc. Did you know that English speaking rail people or even the police wear a red badge on their shoulder to indicate they speak English? These are the sorts of things this book misses.
2) Restaurant/places are described in the text and numbered like they should be on the corresponding map, but then aren't always. This happened at least 3 times in Tokyo, and once in Hakone that I can recollect off the top of my head.
3) The maps leave a lot to be desired. There is no coherence between maps. It was hard to even make this book work with the map book I bought.
4) Better coverage of how to get to or even spot subway stations would have been nice. I also didn't like how if you weren't at a specific starting place, it was hard to get to another destination because the directions only came in one form and again, the maps aren't much help here. Overall, some of the details the book covers on history and such were nice to have once you got somewhere, but the practical information such as how to get around was severely lacking. I don't recommend this book. I bought it cause it had a 5 star rating. I gave it 1 star to bring that down to a more appropriate 2-3 star rating.
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