Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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80 of 82 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not bad, but I did find better..., November 29, 1999
I bought this book, along with several others, including Frommers, for my trip to Japan a little over a month ago. I stayed in northern Japan--near Aomori and visited Tokyo, Sendai, Hachinohe and Morioka. Lonely Planet was helpful but, the book I used the most and relied on the most--with everything to neighborhood maps and out of the way places to eat and shop--was Rough Guide Japan. Same premise as Lonely Planet, but I found it more user friendly and it's information more beneficial. It was fun when I found a mention of a new car Toyota showroom to sit in and test drive models, and the world's only parasite museum. I didn't make it to the parasite museum in Tokyo, but the Toyota Amlux was interesting! Lonely Planet was good, but it didn't always have "mini maps" of the places they were talking about, and that left me confused. Also, they would give "circular" trips around a city, which was good, but if you didn't start out-or couldn't find-where they began, you quickly had no idea what or where they were taking you. There was plenty more in Rough Guide Japan than I found helpful in Lonely Planet, and Frommers just plain, well, sucked. It was my first trip there and the only other advice I can give is to get a rail pass as well as Rough Guide Japan!
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41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The worst LP I've seen, June 12, 2000
I've used Lonely Planet before, always loved them, but this guidebook was a real pain: Half the directions were innaccurate. Sometimes the directions were so vague (and then, upon finding the ryokan or hostel, found to be patently incorrect), that I suspected the authors were writing about it several weeks after the fact. Similarly, the locations found on city maps were occasionaly obvious guesswork. Area maps didn't include kanji names or train-transfer cities, making them nearly useless. City maps were cursory, and I always got a real city map first thing I could, from the tourist board.As always with the LP, its popularity is so widespread that its advice must be viewed with suspicion. For instance, it strongly recommended a noodle shop in Nikko. Upon going to the place (against my better judgement!) I found the LP review hanging in the window, the restaurant full of other gaijin, and unnappealing food obviously aimed at satisfying those who find Japanese cuisine weird. It's probably still worth having the book, just because it's so comprehensive...it's bound to have a place to stay if you pull into a city at 10pm. However, for those touring Japan in detail, not just Tokyo and Kyoto, I would recommend a combination of Will Ferguson's _The Hitchhiker's Guide to Japan_ (even if not hitchhiking, he describes interesting travel routes that can be branched out of), an atlas of Japan (I used the Kodansha english/Japanese atlas, but anything with kanji place names and road&train routes is good), and JNTO pamphlets (easy to pick up) listing all hostels and various ryokans. Japan is a safe, easy, and consistently interesting country to get around in. A comprehensive book (especially one laced with inaccuracies and an obvious bent towards the cities) isn't as useful as it would be elsewhere.
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Better guides available, August 7, 2004
When I traveled in Japan with a friend, this was the book we brought with us. Within a week we were at a foriegn language bookstore in Tokyo looking for a better one. There are some things this guide does quite well -- it helped us out finding reasonably priced places to stay throughout the country, and the advice to get a JR pass was invaluable.
However, the book has a very negative, immature view of Japan as a country and travel in general. It seems to be written by bitter expatriates with a fascination with gaijin bars and the sex trade. Did I pay $1200 for plane tickets to go drink with Americans? The authors express a bias against culturally interesting sites, ancient and modern, that borders on the anti-intellectual. The cultural notes are dated, inaccurate, and shallow. After a while, we began to think, "If Lonely Planet doesn't recommend it, it's probably interesting." The maps, as many have mentioned, are almost useless. Ironically for a series which fetishizes getting off the beaten path, it's practically useless once you get out of the main tourist areas.
There are much better guides available. This entry has sworn me off the LP series for life.
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