Travel to Japan

Lonely Planet Tokyo

Format: Paperback
Author: John Ashburne
ReleaseDate: September, 2001
Publisher: Lonely Planet Publications
Rating:

What a waste of my money!!
I had just returned from Tokyo, and throughout my journey I had found the book immensely informative. It appears as though the author must not have liked Tokyo very much, or else he/she had simply gone through the place in less than three days. . . NOT. In fact, it was downright frustrating to use, given the amazing number of unhelpful maps, half-useful directions and descriptions of places that seemed half-hearted and downright incomplete.
For instance, it mentioned takashimaya square as a place to visit. Happily, I noted the place in my itinerary but did not bother to check for directions first. Imagine my horror when I got to shinjuku station and could derive no clear directions as to how to approach it, from the book. Takashimaya was not even shown on the shinjuku map in the book!
Another grouse I have is the lack of information and places of interest regarding anime. Japan being the land of orgination of anime, I would have expected a bit more write-up on it, not the measly single paragraph that does not do justice to its significance. People who are interested might take note of the Studio Ghibli Museum located in Mitaka - tickets can be purchased from any Lawson convenience store; to reach there, take JR or the subway to Mitaka station, there'll be a bus that caters to the museum visitors there.
All in all, this book is less than useful and I found its lack in most instances to be completely unforgivable. People who are used to blindly purchase from the series based on the strength of its brand name, as I did, please beware!.

A disappointment
For the past 7 years I purchased at least 7 Lonely Planet books and they all served me well when visiting interesting parts of the world. We went to Japan for vacation in October 2003 and LP Tokyo was all we took with us. Even though I studied 2 years of Japanese in college (ie, I can convert the book's English letters into Japanese characters when looking for places) and this was my third visit (ie, already know what to expect), I still find it confusing in Tokyo since it lacked useful information, and the only thing I used is probably the subway map. Two things that bothered me the most:

1) lack of truly useful phrases in the back section. Ok I know there's actually a Japanese phrase book sold separately, but how could this book has Japanese translation for I'm "Epileptic", but does not have a useful phrase like "please (do/don't) wrap this for me", which is a whole lot useful as Japanese merchants tend to wrap your purchases with beautiful paper, many times they asked me whether I'd like to have it wrapped, thankfully I remembered my textbook days.
2) it is obvious to me that the writers didn't go to all the good restaurants. Maybe this happens to all restaurants (ie, as soon as a travel book mention a restaurant as a good one, everyone would try it out and therefore the restaurant achieves complacency. I tried restaurants listed in the book that actually turned out to be mediocre. And we stopped by some restaurants in alleys that's cheap and tasty. I know it's impossible to hit all restaurants, but how could the writer say that Nikko is a "gourmet blackhole"? Has he/she even walked down the main street to try out the few restaurants that were there? We shyed away from touristy restaurants near the train/bus station in Nikko and walked further up the mainstreet, and we were rewarded with the most memorable dining of our trip, and great food at a meager price. The restaurant owner's family offered us fresh persimmons that were in season to take home, corrected my Japanese grammar(sounds critical but it was actually funny the way they did it), showed us the correct way of eating the food we ordered, and chatted with us about our trip. All I could say is that we were lucky to bump into that place, and anyone could easily do that since it's right on the main street.

Enough about the negative side. I would still buy another Lonely Planet just because I had been a loyal reader and the series had given me countless great memories exotic places even the locals rarely visit. But I just can't give LP credit for its Tokyo book this time(I bought a LP Japan book in 2001 and it was also mediocre). It still has useful information for first time visitors such as the culture, food, getting around by train, and the fact it warns you to avoid Tokyo tower, etc. But when it comes to dining, forget about scrutnizing a street map to find the restaurant addrss listed in the book, you're no further than 100 meters from the nearest restaurant if you're in Tokyo. Usually those restaurants in alleys away from mainstreet (and tourist areas).

OK in quality, but there are better guides
Even trough there are some Lonely Planets I found really great - especially the earlier ones on China and Southeast Asia - this one seems to have copied a lot from other guide books. I've read different guides on Japan and Tokyo, do to several trips I made over the years. I tried hard but didn't find much new and unique information. And there are no walking tours, so you have to do homework before you start exploring. In my view, there are some much better guides.

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