What are Your Favorite and Least Favorite Guidebooks About Japan?
Feel free to list regional guidebooks, as well, if those are your preferred guidebooks.
I don't really care so much for guidebooks myself (I find internet searches to be much more helpful), but I was recently reading Lonely Planet's guide to Japan (2000 edition, I think) and was surprised to see how terrible the reviews were. They didn't really give any information that showed they'd actually been to the locations and from the perspective of someone looking for a new and interesting place to go, I found the reviews to be surprisingly unenthusiastic and rather negative about many sights and even entire cities/areas of the country. The book seemed to be only useful for perhaps finding sites to research on your own later (and even then it doesn't have that many places to go). Otherwise, a reader could be persuaded to skip Japan altogether after reading that.
Anyways, what are your opinions on various guidebooks that you've read? Helpful for sightseeing? Worthwhile reviews? Confusing? Unhelpful? Misleading?
Do you like Lonely Planet? (might as well add this specific question, since I complained about it. lol.)
Anonymous2009-02-10T07:47:05Z
Favorite Answer
I had a chance to browse through an old version of Lonely Planet last year and I found it to be interesting at best. The articles on each area were just okay. It was a little boring to read, to be honest.
Online, I tend to go through 2 websites:
Wiki-travel: Not the best but it has similar information to what Lonely Planet would. Japan Guide: One of the best online resources but it is getting a little dated lately.
For Japanese travel guides, I prefer RuRuBu myself. Obviously it's in Japanese, but some of the titles for restaurants are in English and they all have maps of each region. This is actually a magazine that is published every year, and sometimes every season. They have every major city covered, and every major region. They have "driving" versions with driving courses, and also a few walking courses. All magazine travel guides in Japan sell for around 600-800 Yen. If you are lucky, you can get a 1 year old edition at Book-off.
Yes, you are right. Lonely Planet is usually very good and I use it a lot in other countries. The Japan one is a bit dry and it lacks a lot of information they put in their other guide books. A shame really. I usually use the magazines you can buy in every convenience store by Mapple called Mapple magazine. It is, of course, in Japanese and you must be able to read Japanese. I like it because it is very colorful, you will always end up eating something nice, soak in nice hot springs, stay at great hotels, it has touring routes for day trips and their maps are excellent. They have them for every prefecture, so you don't have to carry too much around and at around Yen 700, they are very affordable. Their website is nice too: http://www.mapple.net/ Japan wants many more tourists to come but at this rate nothing much has been done to increase tourism. I found that Korea has made many efforts and it is much easier to get around and by. I was very disappointed with the National Tokyo Museum in Ueno, nothing was written in English or very little explanations were given. The same goes for the Salt and Tobacco Museum and of course many museums all over Japan. I mean, tourists come here because they are interested in Japanese culture but if they can't even get any explanations in English why bother coming here. Japan is really ages behind other countries when it comes to tourism. The tourist information in Kyoto station really sucks, I asked them once a serious question about silk production in Japan and they didn't know the answer but in order not to lose his face, the guy made me look ridiculous for asking such a question.
I'm surprised to hear LP was no good since I used it back in 1990 and it was a big help, esp with figuring out how to get work without a visa. They don't really pay their writers well anymore from what I hear and rely on people sending them articles for free.
I loved Japan though and stayed for six months. There are some weird things about the country and women are sometimes not treated well, but the food and castles are great.
I liked the old Lonely Planet guide to Japan before they revised it. The new one is like you say, written by someone who doesn't really seem to like Japan. It's not really a guidebook, but "The Roads to Sata" by Alan Booth is a great book about his walk from Hokkaido to Kyushu. Booth really liked Japan!