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   September 10, 2003
 17 out of 21 found this review 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!!   February 4, 2002
 48 out of 55 found this review 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   June 6, 2000
 3 out of 9 found this review 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.