Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
frustrating guide, September 18, 2001
By A Customer
I'm writing this from Kyoto, where I had hoped to use this book to help me get around and find places to eat and shop. Its so poorly organized that the maps are unusable. If I go to a district, I want to be able to find shops, restaurants, andplaces to visit easily. I can't do that with this book. They are indexed on the map, but do not appear together in the text. Also, I think there must be places listed on the maps (with no explanation) that are no where else in the book. Many of the restaurants listed are also unfindable, perhaps because they have gone out of business. This is not my first time in Kyoto, and I know the layout of the city fairly well. If I had to rely completely on this book, I would be very unhappy. This book has not been helpful in leading me to specific places at all. The general information about Kyoto is ok, but I wanted helpful suggestions for getting around. Thus, well indexed maps are indispensible and this book's maps are cumbersome to say the least. Also the book's index is totally inadequate and the exchange rates listed are a joke they are so out of date. Other information is wrong too.
Sorry for the harsh comments, but this is a bad book.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not quite the book of lies...., August 7, 2001
Well I just used this book and it is not a bad book but it is not great either. It was handy however, in identifying me as a tourist and therefore approachable to help.It was called the book of lies by my friend due to the fact that much of the information seemed to be outdated and not overly informative. An example being that the admission prices were a few hundred off for the museums and also the fact that it did not inform people that major portions of museums would be closed for renovation. Another incident was the wasted time in trying to apply for a tour of the Imperial Palace and then finding that the office of the Agency involved were closed in other words, the hours were not listed correctly in the guide. Also, the information that there are at least three seperate tours for various parts of the Imperial Palace compound which you also need to schedule. These and other things makes one cautious about using the guide for exact information. Though there are many maps they were not done very well and there is no pullout map of the transit system of Kyoto you have to rely on the mappings of the transit system on area maps or simply snag a much more easy to understand map from a hotel such as, the Miyako near Keage station. On the positive side it has a decent food section on how to behave and what the food will be on your trip. The book also at least mentioned things to look at or do so that a rough idea is given regarding things in the broader sense. Another piece of advice that I would give is that the small town like Himeji are given very little space or description but have much more available than listed in the guide. I would not rely on this guide exclusively and would suggest another guide in supplement to this book
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
good information but poorly organised!, April 16, 2002
Lonely Planet fills a niche by being a good source of information you are not likely to find in other guides, like the funky and the inexpensive, but really I wish they would make their guides more user friendly.For one the maps are extremely frustrating to use. The information on them is numbered, and the keys are either on the page before or the page after the map, so you constantly find yourself looking at the wrong key. The info would fit on the maps themselves, but they chose to use keys without taking full advantage of them by not including the page number of each item's description. Also each map points in a different direction and is a different scale from the others, very confusing. I also found the index to be lacking some very obvious entries, I don't remember specific examples but I do remember being puzzled by the index on several occasions. By the end of my trip I had corrected many of these problems by penciling them in, I suggest you do this on the airplane so you will spend less time on the street scratching your head. This guide also has the nasty habit of inserting chapters in the middle of chapters. Sometimes you don't realise there is more information on subject you are reading, you are expected to look past the following chapter. I found the information in the Kyoto book to be somewhat more up to date than the Lonely Planet guides I have used for other cities. I have learned not to rely too heavily on their specific recommendations, but they usually put me into the right neighborhood for what I am looking for. Over the years I have been a repeat customer of these guides, although grudgingly. I find them to be a good source of getting the feel of a place before I go somewhere. Lonely Planet is going to lose my business real soon if they don't redesign their guides and become more diligent about updating their material.
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