Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Tokyo

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought the condensed guide because it was small, fit easily in my bag, and seemed to have enough information to keep me going for a short trip to Tokyo. Once I got there, I discovered good and bad about this book.

Good:
- Excellent overview of the city, the major sites, and good itineraries for short stays.
- Helpful maps of the city and subway systems.
- Great cross-referencing between the maps and the guide.

Bad:
- Restaurant listings in the book were all in English with no Japanese spelling for the names. At least in the neighborhoods we were visiting, there were no romanized signs for the restaurants, so we were completely incapable of finding any of the restaurants listed in the book. Although we cannot read Japanese, we are capable of doing symbol comparison, that would have been very handy. We ended up buying a second guide to help us find restaurants.
- No maps of the JR lines in Tokyo. We ended up picking one up at the train station.

Lonely Planet fills a niche by being a good source of information you are not likely to find in other guides, like the off-beat and the inexpensive. But really I wish they would make their guides more user friendly and be more diligent about updating their material.

The maps in this guide are extremely frustrating to use. You have to flip back and forth between the map and the key, which is located either before or after the map. The key does not include the page number of the description, so you also have to flip to the index which often does not include what you are looking for. I also had the Time Out Tokyo guide with me and I quickly decided that I prefered it over Lonely Planet Tokyo. I found the two to be very similar in content but Time Out is better organised and the maps are excellent.

The Lonely Planet guides have the irritating habit of inserting special chapters in the middle of regular chapters. Sometimes you don't realise there is more information on subject you are reading, you are expected to look past the special chapter.

Because you have much better choices for Tokyo, I highly recommend "TokyoQ" and "Little Adventures", my recommendation would be to not bother with this one.

We went to Japan for vacation in October 2003 and LP Tokyo was all we took with us. 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. 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).

If you don't speak Japanese and you're visiting Japan for the first time, this book is an absolute must! The maps are very good - this is very important since roads are not very well marked in Japan. You have to get by using landmarks and Lonely Planet does a great job of listing them & locating them on their maps. The subway map needs to be relocated to the end of the book - its tucked in between & hard to find. The top ten list was great - I thoroughly enjoyed my visits to the shrines & the palace. I also found Kabuki very interesting. Further, we are vegetarians and were terrified at the prospect of eating in Tokyo (& no, fish are not vegetables). Lonely Planet had a decent list of vegetarian restaurants and also suggestions on how we might locate other veggie restaurants. If you want more jazz, I recommend that you supplement this book with an eyewitness guide.

I just returned from three months in Japan. I found this book to be extremely informative and helpfull in getting around. The books descriptions of Tokyo's different districts were accurate and detailed. The book helped me become confortable with the Tokyo subway system. The maps are not great, and the difficulty in reading the maps caused me to rate this book a four instead of a five, but it is a must have for anyone travelling to the Tokyo Metropolitan area.

I've read different guides on Japan and Tokyo, do to several trips I made over the years. 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 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

Tokyo is not an 'easy' Asian city like Bangkok, Jakarta or Singapore. In Tokyo you can be truly lost, unless you are with locals. Despite my experience as a continuous traveller, I have been literally lost in Tokyo many times - entering pharmacies which I thought were restaurants, looking for inexisting cash machines, wandering around the underground without realizing how many networks there are... This book may not be great, in fact it does have some lacks. Yet, by all means, it is a great tool to feel more comfortable in this Asian capitaly, and also to enjoy it.

This book is an excellent guide on what to do and see in Tokyo as well as providing insight into Japanese culture and language. It gives a list of the must-see items (don't miss Tsukiji fish market) with clear maps and directions. It provides practical tips on how to get around (especially important in a city that uses a non-roman alphabet!). I found the book extremely useful on my recent (first) trip to Japan.

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. I had just returned from Tokyo, and throughout my journey I had found the book immensely informative... 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!

Lonely Planet Tokyo (Condensed Edition), 2002. This condensed guide is a very convenient guide book: it fits into a back pocket nicely, and the covers (including fold-out maps) are very durable as they have a waterproof coating. I have carried this map around during two Tokyo visits, and it has held up nicely (including during rain). The subway and train map is very current, but it does not cover much outside the JR Yamanote line circle, and the writing is pretty small print (but you can supplement it by picking up a free subway map at a subway station). The reviews are very good, but at least one restaurant seems to be out of business less than 6 months after the printing. The addresses are accurate, and usually a subway exit is specified; however, it can still be a challenge to find places in Tokyo, but this book gives you a very good start. I also like the color photos throughout the book. Overall this is a very good, condensed guide to Tokyo, great for carrying around town while a more detailed guide can be left in the hotel room if desired.