Japan (Rough Guide Travel Guides)

I'm in Japan and feel moved to tell other potential readers about problems we've had with this guide. First off, the index is terrible - many important names and places which are actually in the guide if you look through it, do not appear in the index. In a guidebook, you need to be able to reference things quickly to find out where you are.

Secondly there are huge omissions and inaccuracies. The guide says for example that you need an international drivers licence to hire a car. We managed it without in 2 places - with a normal UK licence. We arrived at a place last night and looked up the hotels. There are no prices in the guide which makes it difficult to assess which one to go forn and directions are very sketchy. In the end a japanese person looked one up on the internet which was right next door to one of the ones in the guide but a third of the price.

When travelling around by car, the maps are woefully inadequate, and mention a lot of places without giving any information about them at all. With the result that we were driving around desperately looking for a hotel late at night.

Finally the language section is not adequate. It doesn't have the word for a car in the travel section for example. It doesn't recommend a dictionary to buy before you go (with transliterations). Overall very frustrating and I felt it had let me down.

Good general info but starter reference only (15/19 people found this helpful)

As it's names suggests, this book is a good comprehensive and readable rough guide to Japan. However, if you want a more in-depth source of info you'd be better off contacting the Japanese Tourist Office and asking them to send you pamphlets and maps. There are places which are not covered by this book and many rural places are mentioned only in passing. There are sections where the authors have clearly visited and remembered enough to write down directional guides, but on the whole, I'd say that the book provides an overview of what's on offer. Overall, I'd recommend it to someone who has never visited Japan, but to get the most out of your holiday, I'd use this as starter reference only. My only gripe is that there aren't enough pictures and you don't get a feel for the places.

Sogoi!! (45/50 people found this helpful)

Without a shadow of a doubt, the best and most authoritative guide available on Japan. TRG won the Travel Guidebook of the Year Award, and for good reason. Like all TRGs, the Japan edition is broken down into several logical and intuitive sections, beginning with 'the basics' (getting there, climate data, health, insurance, sports, etc.), going through all the various regions of Japan and finishing with a section called 'contexts', which deals with history, religion, arts, environmental issues, language and so forth. Like the majority of guidebooks, there is a large emphasis on the capital, with a good chunk of the book devoted completely to Tokyo, but unlike other capitals, the megapolis of c.23m people probably deserves the treatment and still not everything is covered. Unlike its poorer cousin, the Lonely Planet series, the Rough Guide doesn't go in for scorning attractions or areas, but the text is laced with good advice and enough value judgements to help you spend your time wisely. The authors have done a splendid job of rooting out some real gems and are not obnoxiously opinionated, something which always grates when one is reduced to referring to Lonely Planets. TRG has surveys of accommodation, restaurants and entertainments for each area; it covers the whole price range but in doing so can become scanty if you are always, for example, on a low budget. The text is dense and stuffed with maps which come in very handy indeed. My only criticism of TRG is that, like all products that have to be commercially viable, it doesn't really cater to minorities, e.g. gay and lesbian travellers/residents. This is - to an extent - understandable, but no excuse not to provide better links to alternative sources of information. Otherwise, a thoroughly-researched and comprehensively accurate tome (in 4 months I have found only 4 inaccuracies in it, two of them numerical and of no significance, one a outdated phone number and one an inexistant website). If you are visiting Japan for any significant length of time, buy this book.

A very good guide book with a host of useful information (3/9 people found this helpful)

This is the first time that I have been travelling with a Rough Guide book and I found it invaluable. Not only was it good at pointing out places of interest, but it also contained very useful information about travel arangments to the places along with prices. It also contained great stuff about accomodation in various cities and towns which we used on a number of occasions to geat success. When I next go abroad I will definitly pack the relevant Rough Guide book.

No the best Rough Guide? (21/26 people found this helpful)

Having travelled a number of countries, relying almost completely on the Rough Guide series, I found the Rough Guide to Japan somewhat lacking. This is not to say that the Guide is not an important companion in Japan - we also brought along the Lonely Planet edition, and (as usual) the Rough Guide was the book we referred to most. My comments are critical only because the Rough Guide series is by far the best travel book anyone of any walk of life can use in an unfamiliar country, and I feel the Japan edition does not conform to their usual high standards.

Perhaps one of the great joys of being in Japan is sampling the wealth of cuilinary delights on offer. But the Guide seems to list (especially in Tokyo) many Western-based food outlets. Yet the Guide also provides the statistic of 60,000 restaurants existing in Tokyo, compared to a tenth of that in New York, and less in London. Yet very few Japanese Restaurants are listed. Of course, there are language difficulties for guijin (foreigners) ordering from a Japanese restaurant, but it is not an impossible prospect (by the way, if you get a chance to try Horse-meat sashimi (I`m serious!), put back your reservations and try it - very delicious).

The Guide`s summarised coverage of a country`s history is usually a concise and precise affair, and this book is no exception. But I felt where some of the important historical sights were mentioned inside the book, that the authors seemed to skip over some of the details. Now obviously Japan has such a huge cultural diversity that it would be impractical to list the finer details of every historical site. and I also believe that there is something to be said for discovering facts for yourself, but I write this synopsis based on the other Rough Guides I have used, and the coverage of, say Spain, shows a lot more depth.

What I have no qualms in stating is that the index is apalling. No use whatsoever.

Rough Guide have published a Rough Guide to Tokyo (which I have not purchased for this trip), and I feel that they should perhaps split the whole of Japan into separate books to allow more coverage.

Rough Guide will always be my book of choice for travel, and I would recommend the series to anyone. I still recommend the Rough Guide to Japan, (it still knocks socks of Lonely Plant) but I advise anyone going to Japan to use several sources of information to ensure that you enjoy this wonderful country to its fullest.

Jan Dodd, Simon Richmond

Reader Reviews:

Lots of very bad things about this book (32/40 people found this helpful)

Good general info but starter reference only (15/19 people found this helpful)

Sogoi!! (45/50 people found this helpful)

A very good guide book with a host of useful information (3/9 people found this helpful)

No the best Rough Guide? (21/26 people found this helpful)

Similar Products

Categories