Tokyo (Lonely Planet Tokyo) [Paperback]

Kara Knafelc (Author)

Book Description

Series: Lonely Planet Tokyo | Publication Date: November 2004

A comprehensive guide to Tokyo, with increased emphasis on street culture, nightlife, food and entertainment.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Introducing Tokyo

When you first step off the Yamanote Line, you'll find a tangle of sounds and stars and telephone wires. Iridescent tiles on a nearby building will glisten, and bells and whistles will filter through the din of the crowd as the automatic sliding doors of a pachinko parlour half a block away open and close intermittently.

If it's morning, which it probably is if jetlag nudged you awake with the birds, you'll be swarmed on all sides by some of the 20 million people who are on their way to somewhere - quickly, quickly. They will be from one of Tokyo's 23 wards or from suburbs that are featureless or beautiful. They will be bank presidents or janitors or children in school uniforms. They will be patient but a little tired, knowing that come evening they will retrace their steps and reverse their routes - if you happened to be standing in the same spot, you'd be moved back onto the train with them, swept and rolled by an incredible wave.

If you're lucky enough to spend a few more days here, you'll realize that all this madness is as predictable as a lunch bell, and that it's only the surface of this wonderful city, which has as many bars with booths and soft cushions as it does karaoke machines. This is Tokyo's exquisite complexity - a horn in your ear and a hand on your shoulder, the knowledge that you can, if you choose, be alone in any crowd, but if you drop your wallet, three strangers will pick it up.

But there's no time to consider this. You're off into the city, pulled by the escalators and jostled by anonymous elbows. Tall buildings appear, each one a stack of activity marked by a sign to be read from top to bottom, a sign that may be composed of several spiny scripts and perhaps decorated with a patch of English. A few more steps and you happen upon two rust-red wooden posts separated by a few car's lengths and joined high above by a cross-beam of the same color. A neighborhood shrine in the middle of all this? You walk beneath the torii (gate to the shrine) and up to a small weathered structure where everything is quiet except for the well-fed cats who live under the wooden steps. Miraculously, in a city of millions, no-one seems to be around.

You leave and, as you go to step back onto the street, you forget to look to the right and are nearly run over by an old man riding a bicycle at breakneck speed while puffing on a cigarette. Slowing as he's just past you, he turns around to make sure you're okay, then laughs and pedals on.

This is just 20 minutes, a beginning. There are stairs up ahead on the corner, just across from the chestnut stand, that lead down to the subway. These could take you to a train that carries you back to the station where you started. Or like a magic rabbit hole, it could transport you to other neighborhoods where sumo wrestlers eat lunch or grandmothers buy rice or shops sell plastic spaghetti and sushi. And all of this says that Tokyo is about possibility, the real reason more than a quarter of Japan lives here. Though fire and earthquake and economic recession occasionally threaten the well-being of the city, there are steps up ahead, there's someplace else to go - quickly, quickly.

Product Details

• Paperback: 274 pages
• Publisher: Lonely Planet Publications; 5th edition (November 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1740594509
• ISBN-13: 978-1740594509
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #936,680 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #70 in Books > Travel > Asia > Japan > Tokyo

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than Frommer's, January 8, 2005

By 

Michael Bianco - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tokyo (Lonely Planet Tokyo) (Paperback)

I recently bought both this book and Frommer's most recent edition of its guide to Tokyo and my own conclusion is that the Lonely Planet guide is much better than its rival. Lonely Planet's is shorter, but the information presented within is much more useful--especially for my situation as a student with a place to stay and food being taken care of (though Lonely Planet does have information on hotels and restaurants for those who need to know). This guide has several things that Frommer's lacks...

1. a fairly complete section of street maps of downtown Tokyo that include all the subway lines.

2. cross-references within the book between sections on places of interest organized by geography and sections organized by topic. This enables one to look up on a museum, find its location, and then more readily look up other places of interest in the vicinity.

3. more walking tours.

4. correct romaji. I found it extremely annoying that Frommer's would be so careless as to make constant typos with important things such as place names. In one instance, the single-page reference to Tokyo's subway system--the generic schematic that can be had for free from the Tokyo govt--had "Yotsuya" station spelled as "Yetsuya," changing the pronunciation and potentially causing tourists to get lost.

5. More up-to-date. Even though both were printed at roughly the same time (both have 2004 as their year of publication), Lonely Planet has less information that is outdated. Again pointing to the subway reference in Frommer's, the page omits the new Shiodome station, currently a popular destination, even though the station opened back in 2002.

What I also liked about the Lonely Planet guide was the author's mention of the avant-garde of Tokyo for those who want to see more than just Tokyo Disneyland. I wouldn't say the Frommer's guide was a waste; I'll probably take both when I go to Japan this year, but suffice to say I do not regret making this additional purchase.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Bland & Generic -- pass this one by, January 4, 2006

By 

dubberish (Cambridge) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tokyo (Lonely Planet Tokyo) (Paperback)

This guide is terrible. I'm surprised at the good reviews it's received here. Its only merits are its maps. Namely, its map of the subway lines is much clearer than the version distributed in stations there. That the neighborhood maps include Japanese characters is also a plus. However, these maps are ALL YOU HAVE to go on. The listings don't include exact addresses, or specify which subway stop (and exit) to get out at. Once you color-copy the subway map, this guidebook is absolutely returnable.

I found that most of its suggestions are nothing special. I don't know if the author settled on a few favorite places that she frequented over and over again without exploring the rest of the city, but it seems she only skimmed the surface of what Tokyo has to offer. This may be reassuring to some, but it's useless if you're a college student or 20-something looking to get a feel for the city's famously spirited & edgy youth culture.

I was particularly dismayed by its restaurant suggestions. The author's specialty seems to be in recommending places that serve international cuisine. This is TOKYO. Why would I want to eat mediocre Indian food (Moti in Roppongi), mediocre Greek food (Spyros in Harajuku), or mediocre Italian food (Sicilia or Gino's), or a bagel and potato salad (Apetito near Yoyogi-koen)???

I trustingly tried each of the above restaurants, each time hoping she had suggested them with good reason that would override the fact I didn't go to Japan to eat spaghetti. But, no. If you quickly browse her top 5 lists, the list for each neighborhood never fails to contain at least 2, or even 3, places that specialize in non-Japanese cuisine. Tokyo has hundreds of restaurants. Even if sushi or sashimi makes your stomach squirm, there's still plenty of delicious local food to be found. Just not in this guidebook.

I was equally unimpressed with the guide's section on Bars & Clubs. First, these are not divided by neighborhood, but grouped all together. Flipping back & forth between maps gets pre-tty annoying. But what really says it all is the sole top 5 list: "Top 5 Gaijin Bars." Exhibit A: the pub Dubliners, which "provides the kind of noise you're used to at home; the scene is so familiar you may just forget you're in Tokyo." I can understand the appeal of this to a homesick expat who's been stuck in Tokyo for years. Otherwise, I have no idea why any tourist with a bit of daring and curiosity would want to visit gaijin bars. Almost all her suggestions are similarly run-of-the-mill and predictable.

Her description of the sight-seeing in each neighborhood is practical and decent enough, but that's a minimal requirement for any self-respecting guidebook. Unfortunately, she left out 2 of my favorite neighborhoods, which lie just outside of central Tokyo: Naka-Meguro and Shimo-Kitazawa. Furthermore, her prose style has a remarkable ability to strip anything she describes of character and life.

You'd think Tokyo was the most unexciting, generic, BORING place in the world if you went by this book. I highly recommend Time Out's guide instead -- it's the best one out there. (I've written a separate amazon review explaining why.)

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not bad, but be aware of its shortcomings..., April 18, 2006

By 

sodakar (Bay Area, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Tokyo (Lonely Planet Tokyo) (Paperback)

I frequent Japan, but I pretended to not know a single thing about Japan, and tried using this guide to satisfy all of my questions about culture, tradition, transportation, events, history, food, lodging, etc... And for most things, the guide was helpful, but in almost every case, the answers were a bit short/shallow, and didn't go into enough detail to truly answer the question.

Specifically, I was somewhat disappointed by the half page or so dedicated to all of the various major cities of Tokyo. One would think that you would need more than 5 pages *total* to cover Shinjuku, Harajuku, Shibuya, Roppongi, Asakusa, Tokyo, Ueno, Ginza, etc... Quite frankly, I think each city deserved its own 5+ page section, and a detailed map of each city.

Speaking of maps, while the guidebook maps contained both English and Japanese (which is vital when asking for directions, as the Japanese aren't confident of their English despite 8+ years of mandated English education), they were not detailed enough to be useful. I didn't particularly care for all the landmarks to be marked with numbers, which meant a constant cross-referencing between the map and the not-so-conveniently located legend on the next page. At the hotel, I picked up a free map (available in various languages) from the *official* Japan travel bureau (japanwelcomesyou.com), and found the maps to be far superior. Far more detail, a sidebar full of suggested activities, and major store names and eateries actually listed on the map so I don't have to turn pages 20 times to get an idea of what is where. Did I mention that the map is free?

The subway map in the guide was useful, and better than the one handed out at your typical subway station, but I was shocked at the complete absence of the JR (Japan Railway) map. Sure, the subway system is useful to get to the inner areas of the "Tokyo Circle" (circle of major cities) but if I want to go from those major cities to major cities, 90% of my travel is all about the JR Yamanote Green Line and the JR Central Orange Line. If I want to get anywhere outside of Tokyo, you won't get far without the JR Railway System. Imagine someone including a map of all the side streets of Los Angeles, but leaving out the major expressways... Considering the author encourages you to get a JR Rail Pass (~$200 for unlimited rides on the JR system for a week; great deal if you want to go cross-country), it makes no sense that JR map was not included. As you can tell, I was quite floored by this decision.

Another pet-peeve I had with this book was that it seemed as though the majority of the food recommendations were not Japanese cuisine. While I understand that good eats are good eats, I don't see why I needed to be introduced to so many average French, Italian, Chinese, Southeast Asian, and American eateries. If I'm going to live in Japan, that's one thing, but if I'm visiting for 5 days, I'd like to stick to Japanese cuisine. I do give it major kudos for listing Izu-Ei in Ueno -- an excellent Unagi shop that's been around since the 1700's, the Emperor and big names favor it, but the common man can eat for as little as $20! I love the fact that this store goes completely against the misconception that good Japanese food costs a fortune.

Anyhow, this is a decent guidebook, but I don't see how it can be 100+ pages *shorter* than a guide to Hong Kong (which costs the same, by the way) -- it ought to be 100+ pages *longer*. While it's still better than most of the guidebooks out there, it could've been a lot better.

Good overall guide, but it only skims the surface of Tokyo. I'd rather have the guidebook go a bit more in-depth, and leave the decision of skimming the surface or going in-depth to me, the traveler.

I would still give this guide a strong purchase consideration for its overview information, but would strongly encourage you to purchase a food guide and a (major) city guide that provides you more detail for each of the cities within Tokyo.

If I need 2 more books to supplement a supposed one-stop-shop travel guide, I just can't find it in my heart to give it any more than 3 stars.