Japan for Kids: The Ultimate Guide for Parents and Their Children [Paperback]

Diane Wiltshire (Author), Jeanne Huey (Author)

Book Description

Every year, thousands of families visit or relocate to Japan. Fourteen years ago, Jeanne Huey and Diane Wiltshire made the crossing. Five children and six years later they wrote the first complete guide to entertaining and raising children in this fascinating but often baffling land. Now, eight years on they offer a fully updated version, with hundreds of new additions on:

o AMUSEMENTS festivals, theme parks, cultural centers, zoos, aquariums
o OUTINGS museums, beaches, parks, playgrounds, gardens
o TRAVEL TIPS moving, coping with jet lag, getting around town, day trips
o SHOPPING where to buy anything, from food to fashions to futons
o HEALTH CARE dentists and doctors, pregnancy and childbirth, medical emergencies
o EDUCATION daycare, international schools, the Japanese system, bilingualism
o ACTIVITIES talent agencies, sports, Japanese traditions, and extracurricular classes
? MAIL ORDER listings, catalogs, and the Internet...and much, much more

Compact yet bulging with priceless information and hundreds of tips, the new Japan for Kids is essential reading for families heading for or living in this part of the Far East. From planetariums to petting zoos, educational materials to interactive museums, this handy reference book remains indispensable-a guide that no parent can go without.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Japan for Kids has become a classic. Well-organized and family-oriented, it provides endless suggestions for activities."-Japan Times

"Japan for Kids was written by two expatriate mothers. Families planning to relocate to Tokyo, or those just passing through, should put aside their Japanese grammars, histories and business materials to spend an hour or two with this wonderful book." -Asian Wall Street Journal

"Most books for kids tell us how and where to keep them amused. Japan for Kids is, instead, a family event. I admire Diane and Jeanne for the effort and enthusiasm they put into these pages. Whether you want a festival or a catalog, an aquarium or a toy museum, this book will be a very satisfying guide-even if you don't have children. I know it will be a best-seller for years to come." -Jean Pearce

"Tokyo often seems like a city that was designed solely with the purpose of overtime work and adult pleasures in mind. But once one gets out with the wee ones and starts to explore Tokyo and its environs, there are wonderful treats in store for the readers of this guide." -Eye Ai magazine

About the Author

The authors, Diane and Jeanne, at a local playground in Tokyo with their "research assistants," Kennedy, Kane, Michelena, Nathan, and Gabriella. After living in Japan for a combined total of seventeen years, Diane and Jeanne returned to the United States with their families. Jeanne is now an attorney in Dallas, Texas, specializing in corporate law. Diane, columnist for the Tokyo Weekender and author of Design with Japanese Obi, frequently travels to Japan from her home on the East Coast.

Product Details

• Paperback: 404 pages
• Publisher: Kodansha USA; 2 edition (August 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 4770023510
• ISBN-13: 978-4770023513
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #660,702 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Japan For Kids - best available!, October 30, 2001

By 

Cornelia Kurz (Tokyo, Japan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Japan for Kids: The Ultimate Guide for Parents and Their Children (Paperback)

OK. The book was written by an American primarily from an American point of view, and is heavily weighted towards life in Tokyo. Some basic demographics: Japan - total population about 127 million. The English speaking population in Tokyo is maybe 40,000 (if you assume that most of the West Europeans speak English on top of their mother tongues). The number of registered foreigners living in all of Japan is about 1,686,444 (as of Dec 2000) of which 2.7% are US citizens representing the fifth largest ethnic group after Koreans, Chinese, Brazilians and Philippinos. This is to give you an idea of how small the total number of English speaking foreign residents is. Naturally they are spread out very unequally all over this country with the greatest numbers concentrated in the Tokyo/Yokohama corridor and in the Osaka/Kyoto/Kobe region.

Diane writes very positively. In spite of lack in total coverage of the whole country, this book makes Japan more attractive to people who would be overwhelmed otherwise by the exotic nature of Japan, a country where very few people are capable of communicating on even the simplest level in English (unlike Singapore, Hong Kong, Sweden, Holland, India, etc.) The book is too short to address every nook and cranny of an endless topic, but it is a darn good start in the right direction and the only book of it's kind. Supplemented by the Japan Health Handbook, long term visitors have a good set of tools for tackling the job of living here with limited or no Japanese language ability. There are several chapters dealing with general information applicable to living in most urban areas of Japan. She has also included a lot of web site URLs in this second edition which make more detailed information on a local basis available. This book is not the definitive resource, nor was it meant to be at only 320 pages, but it is an excellant place to get started in the exploration of a potential lifetime experience.

For a family travelling as tourists to Japan this book is also immensely useful coupled with the Lonely Planet Guide and universally helpful hotel concierges (even when their English is sometimes lacking). Even if this book only manages to impart to the reader the "flavor" of this country, the multitude of things that appear similar on the surface but are actually quite different, then the reader has acquired that much more data with which to navigate. It may be best to see this book as a good reference book which will lead to other places for more detailed information once arrived in Japan.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Lifesaver, March 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Japan for Kids: The Ultimate Guide for Parents and Their Children (Paperback)

This book never left the coffee table in the 2 years we lived in Japan. Although some of the info was outdated (phone numbers, etc.) it gave me so much information on wear to take my 3 year old to play, go to preschool, get a haircut, etc. It even gave me great advice on giving birth in Japan when I became pregnant with baby #2! It is written in a very easy way - I found myself picking it up and reading a few pages whenever I had a free moment. This book is a must for anyone heading over to Japan with kids - DON'T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT IT! If you can wait until July an updated version will be published (thank you amazon.com for that information!)Since we will probably be heading there again for a few years (this time with 3 kids) I already have it on order.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars This book should have been titled " Tokyo for Kids", September 28, 2000

By 

Erica M. Ruyle (Wayne State University) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Japan for Kids: The Ultimate Guide for Parents and Their Children (Paperback)

This book should have been titled, "Tokyo for Kids". I was extremely excited to get this book but my excitement faded to disappointment when I opened it's cover to only find mostly things that realated to the Tokyo area. I am currently living in Japan with my husband and daughter and was hoping for more of an insiders view of things to do in Japan. However, I live quite a distance from the Tokyo area and had hoped to find out about things more locally, or even within a more resonable distance then Tokyo. It would have been nice to see more comprensive coverage of Japan. Not everyone who lives here, flocks to the Tokyo area. Although I do plan to visit there at least once while living here, it is not close enough to be the focus of weekend or even monthly outings. There were a few other areas mentioned, but it seemed to me that the authors of this book did not take enough time to throughly reasearch all areas of Japan. There is some useful information in here as far as contacts and ordering, but if you live anywhere outside Tokyo, I can not reccomend this book to you. It is a well written and informative book for what it is, but it should not have been titled, "Japan for Kids", nor claimed to be the ultimate guide...