Rating: 
Summary: There Are Better Guidebooks for Japan
Review: I guess like most other people, I bought this guide due to Lonely Planet's reputation, but I ended up dumping this guide after about a month of my three year stay in Japan. The maps aren't accurate at all, and the coverage is a mixed bag at best. I ended up switching to the "New Japan Solo" guidebook which is the best guidebook for Japan in my opinion. I recommend checking that one out before you drop you money on this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't leave for Japan without it!
Review: I have lived in Japan. And I just returned home from another 2 week visit. I can honestly say that LP Japan was my bible. Being a recent college graduate, and having limited funds, LP provided me with cheaper options for entertainment, accomadation, and food in what is one of the world's most expensive countries. The social and environmental awareness that the authors (and of course the LP company on the whole) show should be emulated by every traveler, every tour operator, and every guidebook. This is truly the guidebook for the independent traveler and for people who can think for themselves and plan their own itenaries. I love how LP Japan (and all other LP books) warn the reader of tourist traps to avoid, and try to steer the reader to sites and towns that reflect the local culture. DO NOT LAND AT NARITA (or KIX) WITHOUT THIS BOOK! And wherever your travels may be, always go armed with the LP guide for that country or region!
Rating: 
Summary: good for finding Japan's worst restaurants
Review: I rented a car at Narita (Tokyo) and headed north on a 3-week road trip. This book has some reasonable hotel recommendations, even at the higher end of the price scale, but it is hard to understand how the authors of the book picked restaurants. At one Lonely Planet favorite I was served a soggy tuna sandwich that might have been found in England circa 1950. A place in Sapporo billed as serving "authentic Indian food" had nothing on the menu that I recognized from Indian restaurants in the U.S., England, or India. Finally the only restaurant in Japan where I managed to get food poisoning was a Lonely Planet suggestion.
Good on hotels, however, and the maps are helpful once you get into a city or region.
Rating:
Summary: The best tour guide in Japan could use this book
Review: I was lucky when I went to Japan because my sister had already been living there for almost two years, just the same, I wanted to do all the research. In looking at all the information on the web and reading several tour guides, LONELY PLANET really stood out. By using this book, I found things that my sister had never heard of -- some of which were right in front of her face. By the time we had spent my 10 days there, we had seen the real world of Japan as well as the tourist sites. The book was so helpful that my sister requested it stay with her. She used it extensively as did I for return trips. As another review pointed out, LP does a great job of describing individual locations (and giving you good landmarks to make the trip low stress) both in the big cities and small towns. The things which stand out for me were the hints on the public baths and hot springs, staying at Buddhist temples, tips on the crowds of school kids that hit in May, cultural events like the bunraku, etc. We've bought the updated version since that first trip and each time find some thing new and exciting. This publisher is the first one I turn to for all my travel.
Rating:
Summary: Indespensible but not sufficient.
Review: I would not travel to Japan without this indespensible source of information. If I had to pick one book to travel with I would probably pick this one for its navigational information, cursory cultural information, etc. That said, I have rarely had success with LP's hotel and restaurant recommendations. I ate in a particularly horrid restaurant in Takayama (although I would not necessarily recommend that town for its great cuisine.) If you will be travelling independantly in Japan, you need this guide. But if at all possible carry at least one other guide as a supplement.
Rating:
Summary: The best one out there for do-it-yourself travelers.
Review: I've been using travel books on Japan for 23 years, attempting to discover new & interesting places. None has completely fulfilled this quest. However, the LP book has set the standard for the others: It covers more places, has more maps, and has more information than any other. "Rough Guide" comes in second in this regard, and I find very few places in RG that aren't covered in LP. It's like the RG author's traveled around using the LP. The omissions are the same on top of that. A few examples: neither covers Fukushima, or Koriyama, both major cities that you may end up in traveling northward, and in the same area, both overlook nice areas such as Miharu town (3 Spring Town, so named for its 3 flowering trees in the spring) and Soma City (famous pottery and samurai horsemen festivals), and neither checks out Rikuchu Kaigan National Park along the Pacific Coast in Iwate. On the other hand, both LP and RG cover the small town of Tono, both not reaching the park. They both also cover the Iya Valley in central Shikoku while overlooking the most isolated Heike refuge in central Kyushu, Gokanosho. There are too many parallels between the two.I agree there is not a consistent style throughout LP. It was written by 4 authors whose work was based on original work by Ian McQueen who burned out after 3 editions, so there is much original style mixed in with subsequent updates by the various authors through the next 4 editions. This does make some areas better than others, though, especially when it comes to locations of bus stops and "getting there" sections. But overall, I don't see much problem with some sections having transportation and other sections not as no matter what book you get, you need to get JNTOs Railway Timetable or updated ferry or bus schedules because the train-bus-ferry schedules change from year to year, making everything obsolete quickly. This book is also aimed at those who are traveling around using the main train routes, who want to see the big sights and maybe a few of the smaller ones. If you have a car or motorcycle, you're going to end up in places that aren't covered in any book almost every night. A smattering of Japanese is the only thing that will help this kind of traveler. It also only contains brief history and background on some areas. At times it seems to assume that you have a separate book for this information. If you want a history book, get a history book. This is a practical guide for travelers to get you to a place and into some lodging. At that it excels.
I do get annoyed with the phone number area codes only being given at the beginning of a section. With a large section, it make take a while searching for the correct page with the area code so you can dial a number. This always seems to happen in an unlit phone booth on a rainy night. Lastly, this 7th edition is now old. I read as part of an article in the NY Times that said that Japan was getting ready to promote domestic tourism to help its economy, that someone was back in Japan trying for an update . This would help immensely as LP quotes exact prices on hotels and admissions. Anyone who has used this book recently knows that prices have gone up on most things, and down in a couple of other cases. I like the exact quote on hotel prices better than RG's range quotes, as I can get a better idea when planning a budget than just a Y5000 to Y10,000 range. When the next edition comes out, I'll be first in line to get it, again looking for anything I've missed (and I know there's a lot as I discover every year). If you're looking for a tool to help you travel through and around a very interesting country on your own, this book is for you. If your hotels and transportation are already covered in your tour, a Frommer's guide with photos and history would work better for you. Kentou!
Rating:
Summary: Great restaurant info, lousy maps.
Review: I've had a very mixed experience with this guide. While the restaurant recommendations are 100% on target, i've been mislead by the maps and directions on multiple occassions. Sometimes it's a matter of lack of detail (like failing to mention a necissary turn) but more often the directions are just plain wrong, with hotels incorrectly placed on the maps or directions that obviously weren't checked. The lonely planet formula works well, with all the essentials covered, but something in the writing style fails to capture the imagination quite so well as other guides.
Rating:
Summary: The worst LP I've seen
Review: I've used Lonely Planet before, always loved them, but this guidebook was a real pain: Half the directions were innaccurate. Sometimes the directions were so vague (and then, upon finding the ryokan or hostel, found to be patently incorrect), that I suspected the authors were writing about it several weeks after the fact. Similarly, the locations found on city maps were occasionaly obvious guesswork. Area maps didn't include kanji names or train-transfer cities, making them nearly useless. City maps were cursory, and I always got a real city map first thing I could, from the tourist board. As always with the LP, its popularity is so widespread that its advice must be viewed with suspicion. For instance, it strongly recommended a noodle shop in Nikko. Upon going to the place (against my better judgement!) I found the LP review hanging in the window, the restaurant full of other gaijin, and unnappealing food obviously aimed at satisfying those who find Japanese cuisine weird. It's probably still worth having the book, just because it's so comprehensive...it's bound to have a place to stay if you pull into a city at 10pm. However, for those touring Japan in detail, not just Tokyo and Kyoto, I would recommend a combination of Will Ferguson's _The Hitchhiker's Guide to Japan_ (even if not hitchhiking, he describes interesting travel routes that can be branched out of), an atlas of Japan (I used the Kodansha english/Japanese atlas, but anything with kanji place names and road&train routes is good), and JNTO pamphlets (easy to pick up) listing all hostels and various ryokans. Japan is a safe, easy, and consistently interesting country to get around in. A comprehensive book (especially one laced with inaccuracies and an obvious bent towards the cities) isn't as useful as it would be elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Not impressive, despite some good aspects
Review: In brief: in Japan, LP is miles behind Rough Guide, which in terms of helpfulness, detail and balance shines like a crazy diamond. There is no reason to buy it except for brand loyalty. In detail: I am not a natural fan of Lonely Planet and Rough Guides, but on my previous trip to Japan, Rough Guide impressed me beyond belief - I found it the best guide on the market. This time, I decided to turn it up a notch and bought a Lonely Planet Japan. I tried to approach it with an open mind - and I admit that it is much, much better than many Lonely Planets that I have seen. There is almost no cheap anti-American rhetoric (good job they kept spiteful fingers of Deanna Swaney well away from this one). The guide, however, did not think it was worth mentioning that Japan's Norhern Territories are still occupied by Russia and that this is one place on earth where World War II has not ended, because the two countries still do not have a peace treaty. Imagine now that these territories were occupied by the Americans: there would be many indignant passages denouncing imperialism of "yankees". Not a big score on fairness front. Most maps are better than cheap-and-lazy imitations found in many Lonely Planet books, and there is plenty of information on lodging beyond your local dumpster. Even better, Lonely Planet seems to finally have ditched their senile ramblings on flight information and no longer focuses on irrelevant oddities of Apex Fares and Courier Flights. However, the book still maliciously avoids any mention of mainstream ticketing and hotel booking websites, making sure those who can least afford it are ripped off by "youth travel specialists". I would like to hope they do that out of their usual misguided sense of political correctness - otherwise it is just a blatant product placement, which would be really hypocritical. On the plus side, finally there are some professionally-made photographs and not granma's snaps made with disposable camera. Use of kanji characters alongside with main placenames and attractions is a nice gesture and helpful to those of us who have not commited themselves to systematic studies of writing in Japanese but would like to learn a sign or two. The biggest criticism is that the guide is really patchy and chaotic. There is very little information on train travel times and frequencies. Hotel descriptions are lazy and pricing info is oftern inaccurate. Descriptions of attractions are too varied in their quality to be reliable, and often look decidedly lazy. Lonely Planet often disappoints with their apparent "been-there-done-that" approach, where it seems like a traveller is encouraged to do some box-ticking and to roam around without any focus or genuine interest. The Tokyo part is stunningly disappointing, while Kyoto and Nara chapters are more adequate. It seems that the authors do not like Tokyo much and just go through the motions. I liked Sapporo and Okinawa bits, which I thought were well researched and more inspired than descriptions of more mainstream destinations. Non-geographic chapters on arts and cuisine are very good, but they are not sufficient to offset the general feeling of a weak guide. For many, a trip to Japan is an expensive and long-anticipated trip of a lifetime; you will need the best guide that money can buy. Lonely Planet is not up to task on this ocassion.
Rating:
Summary: Badly flawed, but the best option for budget travel
Review: Initially frustrated with this guidebook's (I bought the "red kimono" edition in spring 2004) limp recommendations and surly tone, I also bought the new "Let's Go Japan" book. While more useful than the "Let's Go" book, the LP version has some very flawed contents. The directions to the top recommended ryokan / guesthouses in Hiroshima and Tokyo were poor or nonexistant. Landmarks and restaurants shown on the maps no longer existed in Ginza, Ikebukuro and Kyoto. The photos and history are nice, but in my opinion a wasteful padding. I'd much rather have a $20 book without the fluff, or at least a $27 book that's accurate. Cities change and mistakes are made, but when LP's writers place a ryokan at the top of the list (incidentally, the "best budget option" in Tokyo proved to be extremely overrated by this book), there should be a premium placed on the traveller being able to find the place. I gave LP 2 stars instead of 1 for the very valuable advice to purchase a 7-day rail pass before visiting Japan (but did not distinguish between a "green car" ride and an ordinary ride; in my experience, the ordinary non-smoking cars were spacious enough). If and when Fodor's/Frommer's comes out with a new edition, it will almost certainly be a better value than LP.
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