Travel Guides

In these days of instant internet answers provided by Google, TripAdvisor and numerous forums, it might seem a bit odd to consider travel guides an important purchase. But when you're lost on some back road, turn up in the wrong town, don't speak the language well and don't have a computer, they come in pretty handy. There's also something to be said for being able to flip through a guide and read about culture, food, dress, places of interest and manners without needing to seek separate resources for each.

With that, I whittled through recommendations and piles of guides and here are the four I plan to take to Japan and why:

My Four Guides

You can see that I selected one EyeWitness guide, a pocket atlas from Tuttle and two Lonely Planet Guides. The top two guides were reviewed by checking them out from the local public library.  I checked out pretty much every guide they had on Japan and my husband and I chose the ones that seemed to be the best. You can also browse a bookstore or on-line reviews. This ensures you don't waste money on unhelpful guides. Also  note the post-it flags. They're not for everyone, but I like to use them as page markers.

I am very fond of EyeWitness books due to their layout, photos and information and this one was perfect. It contains tidbits almost every topic without being too large. It is full of glossy pictures and maps. It also contains a few errors, however, as you can see in the Amazon reviews. However, I adore it anyway. I guess this would be my fluff book.

The book to the right is a guide to Kyoto. Like most Lonely Planet guides it is lacking in gloss; rather plain.

Interior view.

What it lacks in fancy images, it makes up in information. This guide breaks down points of interest by neighborhood. Each neighborhood is described and the temples and other attractions in those neighborhoods are described. Above you can see Kyomizudera, with nearby restaurants, other points of interest and helpful tips. This guide also has some decent maps. The tiny blue flag marks the map of where we are staying, which is in the Gion district.

On the bottom left is a guide I bought purely based on on-line reviews. It turned out to be a great find!

Train and subway maps

This has a huge fold out map, which I am not sure about yet, and tons of tiny maps. Again, it is arranged by neighborhoods (note exactly the correct term, but I'm going to use it here. =P). Each area has a small map, with different sites, such as churches and more famous hotels, marked down. There is a guide to the metro system, which many can find confusing, shown as a whole and then split up into different lines. There are descriptions of how to use public transport to get around, how to get help and why you can't ever rely on addresses. There are also guides to day-trips from Toyko, which is a nice inclusion.

The final guide is simply a phrasebook. It has some basic vocabulary, useful phrases, etc. I can't really recommend it if you don't already have some knowledge of Japanese due to a few grammatical errors, but it's small and will be helpful for me.

Here are some of the criteria I used: Does the book have a good layout, does it include a bit of everything, have others found it useful, is it small/thin, is it relatively current, does it say things I know to be untrue, does it include maps.

Here is my pile of books, from recent buys, previous trips and classes. There's even a new one that we used to read up on cool sites that would appeal to geeks. As you can see, only a few made the cut!

Pile o' books