Customer Reviews

Michelin Green Guide Japan, 1e (Green Guide/Michelin)

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I've always been a fan of the Michelin green guides. They rate everything (i.e. natural scenery, cities, attractions in cities) with the same scale; three stars, two stars, one star, no star. The stars are an excellent starting point when you go to a new place. You don't need to read a whole book if you are short of time. Instead you can just look at the number of stars. There is no chance of missing important sights.

If you have more time, you can decide to go for one star attractions too; otherwise you can just make sure you are not missing any three star attractions close by. In comparison Lonely Planet provides much more information but without the star classification.

Lonely Planet is really targetted towards the budget traveller, while the target of this books is more upscale travellers (for instance a couple in their 40s on independent travel).

Compared with all the previous guides available for Japan, this new Green Guide for Japan
is excellent, and worth the wait. This is essentially the English version of the original French
that came out a year ago. The star rating system is quite accurate and useful, and the pages alloted
to Kyoto and Tokyo, both rated three stars, do justice to the time one should spend in respective cities,
and the can't miss temples, shrines and museums. Old and new must see places are also well covered.
Places to eat and stay are also identified to help the tourist. Together with the new Michelin
Red Guides for Tokyo and Kyoto/Osaka, visitors and tourists now have access to fairly compact guides to enjoy a short or long visit.

This book is very comprehensive and has interesting descriptions that seemed to accurately describe the sites we saw on our recent visit to Tokyo and Kyoto. Tokyo is difficult to navigate for a first time visitor, but the addresses and directions in this book really were helpful in getting us to our sightseeing destinations. One feature I really appreciated was that the book often includes the Japanese characters for the name of the sights which can be helpful since many sights/restaurants don't have signs posted with their English/Romaji name.